The Dishonourables [2]

By

Sam Abbd Israel

You might be wondering what the history of Europe has got to do with leadership problem in Africa. I think it is necessary to trace the problems of Africa as far back as we can in history if indeed we are sincere about finding solutions. The important reason for the brief excursion into the history of Europe flows from the realisation that Africa, as at today, has no original identity of its own. Since the Arabs and the Europeans came into Africa, the cultural values now in place are those imposed by these two races. There is nothing whatsoever indigenous anymore about the ways of life in Africa since Africans came into contact with the Arabs and the Europeans.

Most Africans, because of their short memory as a result of the inability to look far back, have failed to realise that everything we now attribute to African culture was imported from abroad. For example, the belief systems and the religious institutions, the most important spiritual commodity in the life of a people, have been exchanged for the imported beliefs and faiths brewed in Middle East and packaged for export from Europe. It is on record that the foreign invaders ridiculed all the age-long cultural institutions in Africa that depicted and reflected the social, cultural, economic and political beliefs of the continent. The supremacist ideology of the foreign invaders categorically and recklessly denounced all the established cultures or ways of life in Africa as primitive, pagan and evil. It is unfortunate that most Africans brought up under this ideology have grown up to repeat the supremacist foreign ideas and even have accepted the propaganda fashioned and circulated by the foreigners that there is nothing at all of benefit to mankind in Africa’s past.

These Africans even agreed that the cultural past should be buried and forgotten because they’ve accepted it was a past marred in idolatry and evil. These are the issues that informed the brief historical antecedents highlighted above. This analysis was stimulated by the realisation that all the philosophical beliefs, institutional frameworks and cultural organisations presently on the soil of Africa were either borrowed from or imposed by foreigners. Having identified one of the foreigners as Europeans, it was therefore necessary to review the history of leadership in Europe in order to understand the underlying philosophy of leadership practices in Africa.

Before the arrival of the Europeans and Arabs in Africa, leadership status was defined by age in most African societies. The social units within a community were distinguishable only by the order of age grades. For example, a collection of male children that were born in a particular year in a community forms a band or club with an identifiable name or other symbol. The members of the age-grade club who grew up together formed strong bonds of friendship or fraternity that would stand them in good and bad times throughout their lifetimes. It was among the various age bands that leaders were chosen to represent the interest of each club in the affairs of the community.

The selection of who shall lead in a particular age-grade comes naturally. Since members virtually live under each other’s shadows it was easy to identify those with natural leadership qualities and dispositions. Each community was also often divided into sections or quarters made up of units of families who were, most likely, members of one extended family. Leadership within an extended family was naturally decided in favour of the most senior member in the clan or section. In a section or quarter of or entire community, the status that an individual member enjoyed apart from age depended on performance capabilities in a host of valuable skills necessary to the survival of the community. Skills like hunting, farming, craftsmanship, games, music, singing, dancing, oratory, good memory for oral history etc. could earn an individual a good standing within the community for leadership duties.

Every African society like every other society in the world naturally had some rudimentary knowledge or innate understanding of divinity. The African philosophy of life was rooted in the reality that there is a power or force that governs creations. Africans had a sense that strongly believed that the power of life was never too far away. This awareness dictated the customary practice found amongst Africans to consult the power of life at times when grave decisions had to be made. There was no other sensitive decision than the appointment or selection or election of a leader or of leaders in the community. Each society had well-established institutions for divine affairs. The priest or witchdoctor or medicine men or women that tended to the affairs of the divine institutions were always available for such sacred duties.

These divine institutions made appointment and selection of leaders in a community credible because they would have consulted the governing deity or deities of the society before they confirmed leadership status on anyone. There was a big element of trust in the love and power of the deities and in the men and women of the priesthood. For example, members of community were aware that to become a priest was not a career path anybody would normally choose; and they were aware that it was the gods/deities themselves that called people into priesthood. A priest therefore did not need to fear any member of the community but the deity that selected him or her into its service. It was therefore very easy for a priest to pronounce the truth on any matter as the supervisory deities of the community revealed them. Under this divine grace, the priests were highly regarded and respected. The pronouncements that the priests made when consulted on who should lead in a community were always accepted and remained binding on all concerned.

This was the serene social and political atmosphere in practice in Africa. Open community meetings were the norm and not the exception for decision-making. Every adult male member of the community had a right to participate and contribute to the deliberations and discussions on community affairs. The elders/chiefs of each of the composite extended family naturally constituted the supreme council or courts of arbitration, referencing and consultation on all matters of importance in the community. Among the elders were found the community historian, community encyclopaedia or library, the community sage or orator, community pharmacist or herbalist or medicine-man etc. who were always at hand to correct and check the exuberant excesses of younger members of the community on matters of tradition and custom. The age grade associations helped to maintain a form of class differentiation. Deference to elders was a virtue expected of well-mannered young persons. Each child in a community was a child of every elder in the community. Each elder was a father/mother to every child in the community. Each member of a senior age grade was a sister/brother to every junior age grade.

This was the tradition that the Arabs and Europeans condemned to death and replaced with a monarchical tradition of leadership by imposition through a superior military force of occupation. The traditional checks and balances within African communities that ensured that only the most qualified and the most competent person attained to leadership status were thrown over board. The process of leadership selection in Africa moved away from a conceptual frame that had faith in the demonstrated innate abilities and natural talents of its members to a new concept that puts faith in book intelligence. It was under the aegis of this new faith that the Arabs selected new leaders for Africa among the new converts that showed fast tendency to commit to memory verses of Koran while the Europeans selected new leaders among those Africans who could learn and understand the European language. It was as a result of this historical development that African political and economic leaders have been drawn only from the pool of foreign trained and foreign educated Africans.

The local informal and seemingly unstructured traditional practices that served the purpose of education and training of the young persons were no longer good enough. Indeed Africans were made to believe that since they had no writing skills they could not impact any knowledge to their wards. The historic ancient knowledge that was passed down through religious rituals and the highly structured social and cultural customs were condemned as pagan practices. Neither of these two supremacist powers could see the sense and the wisdom behind all the elaborate ceremonies that accompany birth, death, marriage, planting, harvesting, disaster, sickness and all other forms of cultural undertakings as a body of intellectual materials purposely wrapped and preserved in symbols. They could not understand the role of the medicine men/women, priests/priestesses and other local luminaries that formed the sacred and secret guilds for the protection of intellectual property rights of the communities.

It is true that superstitions, taboos and fear of the power of nature were effectively utilised by the sacred and secret guilds both as intellectual materials for teaching the society’s mores and as psychosocial tools to condition the psyche of the people into cultural obedience for political harmony. Yet, it could be argued that this body of superstitious materials were indeed pseudo-scientific materials compiled over the years by gifted and knowledgeable members of the society. But since it was customary and of course sensible to guard jealously the modus operandi of the superstition, the local intellectuals refused to divulge the full meaning of the superstitious ceremonies and taboos that they established to drive off evil forces or to solve social, physical, spiritual and health problems. As a result of this pragmatic attitude of the local intellectuals for secrecy that served the illusory need of social elevation and power acquisition (a typical psychosocial need of all Homo sapiens) the successive generations could not grasp the scientific underpinning and political imperatives of the cultural ceremonies, rituals and fetishes of their societies.

It was the need to protect and preserve the intellectual property rights of the community that progressively led to secret associations or cults or what in modern language is called professional bodies. It was the tradition for a cult member to undergo elaborate initiation ceremonies; to swear on oath to be loyal; and to give solemn promise never to divulge the secrets of the cult to non-members. This was one of the practical manifestations of the universal human nature that strives at all cost to guard jealously any advantage that gives power over other lesser persons. This is a demonstration of the innate psychological need for self worth among one’s peers and the yearning desires for social distinction, prestige and recognition in the society to which one belongs.

The development of the institution of priest and priestess seem to take this route in all societies. Often, it starts with the experience of a reflective and gifted individual who through rigorous application of the mind to issues that pertain to his/her environment became awakened into special knowledge and understanding of some issues of life. It is again an added advantage when the discovered knowledge solved some welfare problems of the society. The gifted individual who declared a true revelation to the society would naturally draw people or believers, particularly those that witnessed the efficacy of the declared truth. There is no gain saying that this wise person during his/her lifetime would naturally be accepted as a worthy leader. Again at his/her death a cult would likely evolve in his/her name to codify his/her habits and life styles into veritable rituals of faith and belief for others to emulate and follow. This is the process that created every known deity as well as every religious faith in the world.

As earlier mentioned, the European values, styles and manners of leadership have dominated the African political horizon since the arrival of Imperial Europe in Africa. It is on record that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, they met thriving social and political institutions with communities that have geographical boundaries. They found that African societies maintain a relatively peaceful cultural and political cohesiveness within an ethnic group. Although, the forms of political organisation vary from place to place but the institution of kings/chiefs was a common feature in West and East Africa. Most communities were small but they were well organised around tribal chiefs/kings who were equally assisted by councils of junior chiefs. These minor chiefs were directly responsible for the organisation of political, cultural and social affairs of their society. The African communities had respect for property rights on products and commodities that an individual produced from the soil. The community land was held in thrust under family titles but its use was opened to every individual member of the community. There was no obsession with land ownership as practiced in Europe under a conquest and rent culture. These were the historical facts on the socio-economic and political institutions of life in Africa before the arrival of Arabs and Europeans.

The political history of Europe was couched on a value that puts high credence on the inalienable relation between land ownership and political power. This political economy that associates war with riches had brought untold hardship to the people of Europe for many centuries. It had led to incessant wars between and within families, communities and nations for land acquisition, possession and control. The institution of royalty in Europe was based on the result of calculated heinous acts whereby the most eccentric powerful band of savages would seize by carnage, pillage and plunder the possession of their neighbours. This type of murderous expedition would have been heavily spiced with a hideous form of ethnic cleansing of the conquered neighbours and the enslavement of survivors as serfs. The vestiges of this kind of culture is still raring its head today in Europe, even in the 21^st century. The former owners of the land would then be forced to eke out a living through an arrangement of levy or rent payment (in kind or cash) before they could have access to the use of their confiscated land. This was the factual historical genesis of how the modern sophisticated prim and proper royal nobilities of Europe acquired their wealth, power and enormous social ‘prestige’.

Furthermore, the conquerors in Europe established patriarchal dynasties rigidly based on the right of primogeniture. This is a tradition that recognizes the legal principle that supports inequality of children since it allows only the first son to inherit the family wealth. In the case where there were more than one son in the family, the subsequent sons were turned loose and forced to fend for themselves as best as they could. It was therefore not a mere coincidence that most of the second or third or fourth sons of the powerful names in Europe were among the successful adventurers, slave merchants, missionaries, soldiers of fortune, pirates and colonial administrators. These were the men forced by circumstances of position of birth to look for their own haven or empires outside of Europe. Therefore, for these outcasts the colonial mission became a task of life or death. These men had nothing to lose anymore and so their commitment to colonialism was total and merciless.

These were the calibre of people that forced their ways into Africa. They were the losers of Europe in search of land and fortune. They were the angry and bitter men who gladly took their revenge of deprivation on innocent Africans. They were happy to transfer all the barbaric cultures of their native lands into Africa. In the process they captured land and slaves and following in the tradition and culture of their race, they became new landowners and the uncrowned leaders of Africa. Again they managed to establish their own dynasty and mini-empires with all the social trimmings of the so-called civilisation. They displayed all the attributes of mini-gods while being hammock-carried (or is it chauffer-driven?) across the jungles of Africa. In short they transferred wholesale every ruinous idolatrous leadership practice of inequality into Africa.

At the time the Europeans met Africans this barbaric value orientation was totally strange to the culture of Africa. At this particular period in history, African societies still held land in trust for the use of all and the leaders had no ambition to propagate dynastic rule under a particular family name. Since there was no aristocratic rent collector’s class in Africa, the means of production was freely secured for all. Therefore, wealth acquisition depended greatly on personal effort, skill and hard work. There was no culture of one clever savage man renting out pieces of stolen land to his neighbours for outrageous payment that takes almost 80% of the annual produce of the renter. The absence of this inhuman and callous culture ensured equality of persons in both spirit and practice in Africa. As a result there was no great kings or nobles scrounging on the sweat of their neighbours. Each member and even the king of the community learned to fend for themselves as best as possible. Therefore each member of the society had full control over the product of the fruit of his/her own labour.

The forceful incursion of Arabs and Europeans into Africa started a negative renaissance that succeeded in turning the age-long values of African societies upside-down. The hitherto African much-cherished value that accepts the philosophy of everyone being his/her neighbours’ keepers was thrown overboard with the advent of slavery. The foreign invaders from the West and Middle East taught the first African contacts they met on the rudimentary knowledge and skill of the then modern trade particularly the one that pertains to how to lure, con and sell one’s trusting hinterland neighbours as well as family members to the slave merchants. The vestige of this evil practice cultivated as a result of the contact with foreign adventurers is yet to be cured in Africa.

The age-long friendly exchange by barter in produce commodities changed to hostile exchange of human commodity for foreign luxury goods and arms. African coastal traders soon realised it was easier to con their neighbours into slavery than to engage in traditional strenuous activities of farming. It was not long before ethnic clashes began to rear their heads in the length and breadth of Africa. Thus, Africa received the brute end of the burst of enlightenment that the Italian renaissance of the 15^th century gave to Europe as well as the perverted versions of the sacred teachings of equality of persons before God that Mohammed gave to the Arabs in the seventh century. With the rich supply of guns, machete and other arms into Africa, each ethnic group moved against its near or far neighbour to hunt them down for the booming slave market.

The Africans living on the coast made the first contact with the Arabs and Europeans and they were supplied with guns and firearms to hunt the hinterland of the continent for slaves. The Africans that lived by the seashores became exceedingly wealthy in foreign money and foreign goods. Consequently, they gained political power over their poorer hinterland neighbours. They were the first crop of African middlemen cultivated on the African soil by Arabs and Europeans. For over 400 years they performed the middleman’s role profitably well. In West Africa, they were the first to accept European religion and western education. Their children were trained to become interpreters, priests, teachers and lawyers.

As interpreters they became corrupt as they swindled their own kind by misrepresenting issues to the disadvantage of their racial groups. As priests, they professed a belief in a doctrine to which they had no clear understanding of the true meaning of the concepts and symbols of the faith in question. They embraced and propagated fictions, myths and pure lies on the meaning of life. As teachers, they were half-bred in the knowledge they disseminated to their wards thereby leading their generation into the wilderness of ignorance. As lawyers, they found their true calling in the act of practical legalistic deception. They imbibed all the phoney habits – wearing wigs, dressing like masquerades, etc. - of learned men of law. They sat foolishly in the prosecution or in the defence of their kinds under every law of injustice instituted by the colonial governors. Since their understanding was limited, they failed to see the fundamental illegality of the whole institution of colonialism as well as the law that emanated out of such unjust imperial and feudal establishments.

Another ingenuous trick of the colonial administration was the recruitment of illiterate Africans from the hinterland as colonial territorial soldiers and security operatives. The peculiar requirements that qualified these men for recruitment into the colonial force were: tall heights, strong arms and broad chests but most importantly, small brains. As recruits in the colonial army they were regularly used for quelling every agitation that reared its head from the group or tribes of supposedly educated Africans. It was from these recruits that the various territorial Colonial Armed Forces were fashioned out. The services of these illiterate Africans as soldiers and gendarmes were utilised satisfactorily in the Second World War. This crop of African illiterate soldiers became the officer’s corps of the Armed Forces of the independent countries. The military personnel of the converted colonial territorial armed forces was later to become the second joker after the one of political independence without economic independence that would eventually thwart the aspiration of Africans for freedom. The military joker was effectively called into action after a short period of independence to dislodge the pathetic political illiterates in power.

The colonial governments all over Africa relied on these crops of Africans along with the new crop of ‘forward-looking’ traditional rulers that were installed or sponsored by the white rulers as aides for the direct and indirect colonial administration. These crops of Africans were willing and they were ever ready to imitate as they aped every act, every imperial tradition or every snobbish mannerism of the white rulers. Unfortunately these Africans were merely mimicking the white man’s way, as they had no conceptual understanding of why the white men did any of the things they did. The hypocritical habits and attitudes of this group of Africans irritated both the white men and their African brothers. As a result they never received any respect from either the white rulers or the African folks. The evidence of this was found in the many cases of rebellion and disobedience recorded anytime a black person was made to lead and direct the affairs of any unit of the colonial administration. These were the seeds of perversion that gave birth to a good number of the crop of latter-day leaders of Africa.

Raymond Leslie Buell in The Native Problem in Africa observed that, "Whether under direct or indirect rule, European officials are obliged to rely upon native subordinates and aides. These aides may be traditional rulers, or they may be educated clerks." He added, "In many of these cases, the educated natives showed that they had lost all sympathy for the group out of which they came and that they had no compunction in abusing their power for personal ends. In all of these cases the educated class failed to command the respect of the people." The Europeans who dealt directly with these Africans in Africa described them as half educated and as ‘likeable rogues’. To refer to these Africans as half or quarter educated was simply being mischievous. The only education these hapless Africans were exposed to was the acquisition of literacy skill – the ability to read and write the European languages.

In addition, these Africans were shepherded to and rooted strictly in Bible or Koran knowledge that forced on them new hypocritical values of fake piety, of holier-than-though attitudes and of foreign cultures, the meaning of which they never understood. The hitherto common native understanding of the meaning of life that had served the spiritual and social needs of Africa for centuries was drastically exchanged for those borrowed from the Arabian and Jewish philosophy. These Africans were forced fed, brain washed and made to swallow wholeheartedly all the Jewish mythological stories of the Bible as the only historical absolute truth of life.

Under these innocuous foreign beliefs and their attendant cultural enslavement, the half-educated Africans threw away all the inherited indigenous socio-cultural knowledge, ancestral beliefs and religious practices of Africa. They were encouraged by their tutors to wage war against every facet of African beliefs and cultures. They destroyed shrines, symbols, artworks, monuments and everything that have the slightest bearing on African indigenous way of life. This senseless display of religious zeal was possible because the half educated Africans accepted without questioning the embellished Bible stories and the recorded self-serving Jewish history as the beginning and the end of history of all humankinds. These Bible stories that painted the meaning of life in Jewish xenophobic colours, unfortunately have also became the foundation on which the moral and philosophical principles of the civilized world are established. The Jewish account of human history became, for the civilized world, the only acceptable binoculars for viewing the historical and anthropological farthest past of mankind. In accepting this Biblical account of the Jewish mythology on the origin of mankind, the Arabs and the Europeans seemed to have totally prohibited all other equally probable dimensions of the origin of mankind.

Consequent to this philosophical premise, compulsory association with the Church of England in British colonies became one of the criteria for the social elevation of any African that aspired to rise in the colonial society. Aspiring youth accepted the habit of compulsory Church attendance as part of the sacrifice that must be made if you expected good recommendations for overseas scholarship for education and training. As a result of the indoctrination, every pupil that passed through the Mission Schools cultivated and imbibed the outward appearances of Christian living. However, the fruit of the teaching of Yeshua [Jesus] centred on love, knowledge, rebirth and freedom was totally foreign to all the products of the Mission schools. Similarly, the teaching of Mohammed pivoted on mercy, knowledge, tolerance and equality was merely acknowledged but never practiced by the Mohammedans in Africa. All the Africans that passed through the religious indoctrination merely pretended to a form of godliness but they lacked godliness itself.

This development satisfied the selfish designs of the colonial governments that wanted docile subjects, impeccable servitude and total obedience in their territories. The colonialist understood very well that too much learning was dangerous to the good governance of slaves or serfs. This was the trend of affairs until a few Africans began to stow away on American trading ships into the United States of America. These daredevil Africans on arrival in America made valuable contacts with the works of African-American thinkers, authors and philosophers. They were greatly enlightened by the American democracy and particularly the history of American War of Independence and American Civil War. The veil of ignorance dropped from the eyes of these Africans and the fire of freedom was lighted in their hearts. On their return to Africa, they organised political forum for the enlightenment of the people on the principles of human rights to equality, freedom and justice. They also became the vanguard of those that sowed the seed of independence into the minds of fellow Africans as they fought moral, ethical, political and legal battles for the full right of Africans to self-determination and self-government.

The turning point against colonialism came on the heels of the Second World War. The great idea that jeopardised the philosophy of colonialism was unintentionally brewed along the initiative that spurred Britain to defend the rights of other Europeans to govern themselves and the right to resist the forces of Germany’s military occupation. The reasons given by Britain to go into war against Germany became the catalyst idea on which the seed of freedom was sown in the minds of Africans and other oppressed people of the world. This fundamental idea about freedom and self-rule found a fertile soil in the awakened minds of African students in Europe and other Africans who served in the military expedition against Germany and Japan.

In addition, the works of African intellectuals in the beginning of the 20^th century - Dr W.E.B. DuBois and Marcus Garvey – did so much fatal damage to the benign attitude of Africans to the colonial ideology of providing good governance and civilization to Africans. These enlightened Africans worked tirelessly to refute all the contemporary myths and fallacies that had been created about the circumstances of Africa and of Africans. For example, Marcus Garvey organised ‘mass movement around the theme of black nationalism’; while Dr DuBois did more than anyone else to raise the cultural and political awareness of Africans through the organisation of Pan African Congresses and Conferences in London, 1900; Paris, 1919; Brussels, 1921; London and Brussels, 1923; New York, 1927; and Manchester, 1945.

Along this line we cannot fail to mention the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi who had consistently mounted a non-violence attack on the injustices of colonial rule in India since 1919 and long before the Second World War started. The War actually gave international credibility to Gandhi’s relentless attack on the inherent corruption of the ideology of colonial imperialism. Coincidentally, the fire of enlightenment for Gandhi was lit in South Africa where he first practiced as a lawyer and witnessed at very close range the unjust racial inequality between the Europeans and other racial groups.

Again, the 1936 unanimous vote in the Union Parliament of South Africa that ‘made the possession of a black skin a final disqualification for the privileges of citizenship’ gave the warning signal to every enlightened black man that the minority white men running the affairs of their countries could also pass similar laws sooner than later. In fact, Macmillan (1938) recorded that ‘White minorities in other parts of Africa betrayed the same nervous leaning to discriminatory legislation.’

These were the interrelated circumstances and forces that somehow band together to fire the independence fever among enlightened Africans in the 1940s. The new crop of young three-quarter educated Africans who have lived among the Europeans and had come to realise the fundamental hypocrisy of the Christian beliefs and faiths that were exported to Africa could not help but to turn their backs on everything European. To these young Africans, equality of persons became a cardinal belief and it was accepted as an inalienable right of every mankind. The knowledge and understanding of this fundamental truth about life miraculously cured the psychological disease of inferiority complex that had hitherto dominated their lives. There and then the veil of ignorance was removed and they were able to see that no European was of any significant racial superior importance than any other African. The discovery of this fundamental truth about humanity set this crop of Africans free from every hitherto mandatory subservient compulsion and it removed all their deep-rooted inferiority complexes.

On their return to Africa, these new Africans stood tall, eyeball-to-eyeball and faced the colonial exploiters of Africa as they demanded in very strong terms for a right to equal opportunities in the affairs of their fatherland. They fought for equal opportunities in the civil service, in business communities, in politics and in civil organisations and clubs. They waged relentless battles on all forms of segregation and discrimination based on differences of skin colour. They exposed and waged battles on every obnoxious colonial law and regulation that were promulgated solely for the purpose of restraining Africans from free expression and free congregation towards self-rule.

The fundamental idea of the right of every nation to self-determination and self-rule that the Second World War threw up gave the impetus to the newly established United Nations and the United States of America to put pressure on Imperial Europe to dismantle the colonial institutions under their control. As soon as India succeeded in 1947 to gain independence from Great Britain, the political floodgate was opened for Africa. It was Libya that first breasted the tape of independence in 1951 among the North African countries while Ghana did the same for West Africa in 1957. Between 1951 and 1968, 39 countries successfully severed their unjust political umbilical cords with Europe. However, the sad news was, the European countries, in one form or the other, held the last joker of this political game.

The final outcome of the battle for independence was more or less tilted in the favour of imperial Europe. It was no longer a secret that the brilliant agitators among the Africans who canvassed for independence were carefully schemed out of the final project. The Europeans ensured that the independence certificate and the staff of office were handed only to those Africans who had shown in the past that they preferred the good governance of Europeans to those being promised by their African brothers. These groups of Africans made the project of political independence very difficult because of their intransigence and unwillingness to support the initiatives at every stage. These African non-believers who refused to see the moral justification for independence became the last weapon of imperialism in Africa. It was on this group that imperial Europe placed its last hope and through them a foolproof plan for continued domination of Africa was crafted.

With respect to Great Britain and citing Nigeria as an example, the alternate political plan to colonialism started in earnest as soon as it became obvious that empire ownership would soon cease to be popular in the world. Crash education programmes were designed for the group of unbelievers or the group of ‘not-yet-ready’ for independence. This group of unbelievers were exposed to basic idea on the nature and importance of political power and governance. The Europeans spent valuable time with this group as they plotted to hand over the political baton of the country to them. These are the people they had earlier carefully neglected and cordoned off from western education. The imperial powers felt that the only way to retain their stolen properties and lucrative investments in Africa was to have in place pliable persons who could be manipulated from afar. They found this type of materials among the independence unbelievers who had no qualm about accepting covertly to front for imperial Britain as long as Britain assured them of protection from their progressive national neighbours.

Within 10 years of the commencement of self-government in independent African countries almost all the governments had been sacked by military coup d’états. The independent government of Democratic Republic of Congo was not even allowed to take off while that of Togo lasted less than three years. The Federal Republic of Nigeria lasted for six years while Ghana had 9 years of self-rule, and so on and so forth. The young military officers that seized power from the politicians cited corruption as the popular reason for their unconstitutional actions. They listed among other things: bribery and kickbacks, nepotism, tribalism, abuse of official positions and power, aimlessness and lack of direction, lack of vision, wastefulness, stupidity etc. Sadly, for another 20 years, the hare-brained military boys took a large part of African countries to the cleaners. Every moral and ethical issue on which the politicians were crucified were broken several times over by these military bandits. These ‘boys’ wrecked havoc all over the continent. Each country that fell under their management was sunk into massive debt and brought into bankruptcy.

Without any unnecessary effort to paint a conspiracy theory but based solely on the available evidences, it is sufficient to say that Africans in their naivety played into the political and economic traps set by imperial Europe. The clamour for independence was not a bad idea, it was the inability of the then Africans to dig deeper in the realm of knowledge before they embarked on the freedom trail that was wrong. These foremost Africans of the 20^th century were just too much in a hurry. Again, with hindsight one can say they were driven by one of the vilest motives in human nature – jealousy. It seems these Africans were just envious, covetous and resentful of the largess of office the colonial civil servants and merchants were enjoying. It is obvious from the result of the independence adventure that the bigger concerns of equality, of liberty and of justice were never fully understood.

As it were, this crop of emerging Africans seemed to have been emotionally captivated by the slogans flowing around from the likes of Marcus Garvey, Dr DuBois and others. There is no doubt, they were captivated and inspired by the patriotic stories of the American War of Independence, the French Revolution and of course the then current Socialist Revolution of Russia. However, these patriots of Africa did not exercise patience in allowing these ideas and ideals to form and recreate them fully before they jumped into the inferno of power and greed. They jumped into the furore that was being championed by Mahatma Gandhi of India before the rebirth in knowledge that Gandhi experienced had taken place in their lives. The result is the alarming socio-economic and political tragedies that are currently facing the continent and the African race. It is on the need to find solution for these human calamities that every African is now being invited to rise up to the challenges ahead as we salvage together the African people everywhere in the world.

Like the famous English poet and writer, Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) we cannot fail to imagine how it could have been ‘if’ only the very few enlightened Africans who were later sidelined by the imperial powers had concentrated most of their efforts, first, to the education and enlightenment of other Africans before they embarked on the independence crusade. Maybe, if they had given priority attention to social revolution (changing archaic ideas, superstitious beliefs, values and customs, non-progressive attitudes, learned inferiority complexes, etc.) probably the divide and rule strategy that was effectively used to sabotage the emergence of purposeful leaders of visions in Africa would not have succeeded. It is obvious that the small-minded class that emerged on the national political scenes of these countries could not have happened if only the very few enlightened Africans understood fully the origin and nature of political power. If they did, they would have realised that no incumbent power holder freely gives up power without a ruthless fight to death. They would have been suspicious of the haste the colonial government acceded to their request to dismantle imperial institutions as well as the benign cooperation that the Europeans freely offered to these so-called enemies of the Crown.

It is on record that on the eve of departure of the imperial civil servants from Africa, they ensured that all the national institutions of politics and of commerce were deliberately fitted with carefully selected African Yes-men. These were the Africans carefully groomed on a fast-track education and training programmes; and parachuted to the head of various essential departments - military, public services, businesses, government and commerce. All their efforts were geared towards ensuring that after their departure these institutions could still be guided remotely from abroad. It is now quite glaring that the considerations under which the carefully selected Africans were appointed and fast promoted to higher offices was not about developing or civilizing Africa; it was about maintaining and protecting the interest of imperial Europe in Africa. It was therefore imperative that the concerns of the colonial civil servants were not to look for intelligent, articulate, confident Africans but for imbeciles, lackeys, ‘likeable rogues’ and half-educated Africans. These were the group the Crown officials and representatives displayed and paraded before Africans at the independence hand-over ceremonies as they bellowed and declared: "Africans! Behold your leaders".

It should be remembered that the logic of leadership in the western world is never built on the elitist theory that accepts that only the best men of any society should lead. From the recorded history of our world, it is only the most ruthlessly wicked and brutally powerful men that have the rights to lead. After securing power, this detestable class of humanity often camouflage their evil personality traits under elaborate outward civility and culture – big costume garments, excessively large jewellery of adornment around their persons, palatial residences called palaces, innumerable retinue of hangers-on or courtiers, etc. Dr Thomas Stuttaford, in a medical briefing titled Telltale signs of a Textbook Personality Disorder gave an incisive professional submission on a British politician who was then in the news at the time this piece was being written. It is a fact that all politicians love to be in the news it is a political aphrodisiac. But this time around, the particular politician in focus was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The short article was definitely an eye opener to this writer.

Dr Stuttaford writes, "The prominent personality disorders are divided into three groups, labelled A, B and C" and that the politician under his analysis "fits into cluster B, the group which includes antisocial, histrionic and narcissistic personalities." The icing on the cake was this: "It is men and women of the cluster B personality disorders who are too often those who succeed and who will later crowd together, not amicably, on the green benches of the House of Commons, will dominate the senior messes in the Armed Forces and control boardrooms. In the past, they created the British Empire." This erudite submission has emphatically confirmed the thesis of this essay that it is the psychologically sick or the spiritually ignorant people of our world who are lording it over humanity.

However, if only the innocent people of the world could listen to the ancient Sages who have insistently advised the sane people of the world to stay away from the "antisocial, histrionic and narcissistic personalities" on planet earth. The sages knew that the innate murderous instinct of these degenerates to defend and preserve their stolen powers knows no limit. It is as easy for this group of humanity as breathing is for all others to take the life of anyone as a precautionary measure against the threat or imaginary threat to their power. The sages advised, do not take their favours or patronages because everything these lots do is calculated to blackmail and to compromise the integrity and the dignity of their friends, subjects and enemies alike.

In short, the unfailing strategy of the monarchical hereditary practices that strive to maintain power eternally in one’s name and for one’s posterity is to continuously devise ways and means to entice, to ensnare and to enslave friends, neighbours and enemies by the use of all forms of carrots. Some of the traditional carrots are, the conferring of titles through the King’s or Queen’s honours list, the elevation of favoured subjects into grand social positions, and the granting of special warrant or licence to favoured subjects to make big money. And in addition when everything else failed, the merciless elimination of all known or imagined enemies. These strategies have never failed since these ruinous humankinds captured political and civic powers of the world.

There is no longer any doubt that since 1960 Africa has been compromised through the class of nonentities set over Africans as leaders. It is now clear that every national government established after independence was operating clandestinely from the deep pockets of the imperial majesties – Belgium, Britain, France and Portugal - of Europe. The men and women purporting to be in charge of Africa were nothing but mere puppets that could only dance when commanded by the puppeteers. A good number of the class of 1960 have now died but unfortunately their spoilt and pampered children have since taken over where they left off. These are the children brought up, under unimaginable privileges by the African standards. The sad ignorant parents who found themselves swimming in fabulous unearned wealth thought it was a good investment to send their wards to private schools. These poor children were packed away from the nursery age to university level into overseas schools and colleges. They were made to suffer unspeakable psychological hardships in the hands of their white mates who felt insulted having these uncouth black children in their classes. The parents thought they were doing these children great favours by given them special opportunities to rob shoulders with the children of established English upper classes or ‘toffs’ in Eton College, Oxford and Cambridge Universities. This was at the time when the age mates of these children in Africa under the mediocre misrule of the fathers of the privileged children, had neither classrooms nor teachers to satisfy their educational needs and unprecedented eager appetites for knowledge.

These children of the so-called African leaders were nurtured on the belief that they have inalienable birthrights to inherit the political establishments of Africa. These children still haven’t had time to review the catalogue of errors of omission and commission committed by their fathers and mothers. In fact, up till this time these children are yet to see anything wrong in the leadership styles and practices of their ancestors. As at when necessary, they love to invoke the memory of their ancestors as a means for gaining political attention and for securing electoral support. Just like their ancestors, they love money, high positions and power and their greed for the excesses of life knows no bound.

Sadly for Africa, the collection of these children drawn from African parents that served in top posts in the colonial indirect rule administration, in the military establishments and in the political administration of military coup plotters as well as in the notoriously corrupt public services have teamed up to become the new elites of Africa. As their parents were before them, these new elites are equally bereft of true knowledge on the meaning of life. Of course, they exhibit all the pretences of the educated, of the cultured and of the civilized but these elites of Africa are as hollow and as noisy as empty barrels.

These new elites are the current class of democrats in Africa whose only interest in democracy is centred on deals and dealership of power. They have no political ideals of any kind except the one that says ‘the end justifies the means’. As far as they are concerned, the end of politics is power. Therefore, whatever compromise one can make; whatever unethical deal one can broker; whatever lie one can get away with; and whatever murder of political opponents one can sponsor, as long as any or all of these things deliver the coveted political crown of leadership, then a good democrat should go for it. These are the new crusaders in Africa. They have no time to study and digest the philosophy, the moral and ethical principles that informed the birth of the concept of democracy in the world. They throw around concepts and popular quotes from the Greek philosophy, Jewish ethics and Arabian theology but they are least bothered about seeking further to understand the culture and the nature of social forces that gave birth to these popular words of wisdom.

Dear Africans, behold the charlatans on the political stage of the African continent. Please, behold again the so-called leaders as they continue to foul the air of all divine sensibilities, to pollute the atmosphere of moral and ethical virtues, to block the window of enlightenment and to suffocate the civil and political institutions of Africa. These are not leaders; these are the pretenders, alias the Dishonourables. They have no leadership qualities because these are not virtues found among robbers or their unrepentant descendants.

The foregoing reviews and revelations are the reasons for tracing the history of leadership from the western perspectives of our world. The close connection of global history is another veritable proof of the interrelatedness of mankind despite the wall of hate the supremacists have tried to build between racial groups. I believe every living person needs to understand the meaning, nature and origin of leadership practices in the world and their negative consequent effects on global peace and welfare. Until the awareness of this knowledge has been popularised among the enlightened souls, most Africans would not realise that the problem of leadership in Africa cannot be dealt with in isolation. The contemporary leadership spirit, style and culture in the world is a global virus and like the treatment of any malignant cancer we must get to the root of the nature of the virus before we can find effective treatment. Anything short of this fundamental approach to the leadership fraud of Africa and of the world cannot go beyond a palliative solution, like covering a virulent skin problem with a beautiful garment.

To be continued