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Momodou
Denmark
11717 Posts |
 Posted - 19 Jul 2007 : 01:30:00
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Foroyaa Editorial
MYSTIFICATION OR DEMYSTIFICATION OF CULTURE, WHICH ROAD FOR AFRICA?
The Kanilai Cultural Festival is now history. Those who had time to follow the performances are busy informing others what they have seen. The claims are startling.
Some claim that the Malians created a replica of President Jammeh.
Secondly, others claim that someone was raised from the dead by the Sierra Leonean Kamajos (hunters).
Others claim that sugar was transformed into rice. Others claim that dust was transformed into sugar. Those magical feats are presented to indicate the richness of the traditional knowledge of the African.
The fundamental question that each African or concerned person should ask is as follows:
How does such traditional knowledge serve to enhance the liberty and prosperity of the African.
One does not have to be a scientist or a monotheist to conclude that a human being cannot create another human being. Hence one may be ignorant of the art of magic which operates on the principle exploiting the concentration gap that exists when a human being focuses attention on something while another thing is taking place. Of what value is knowledge that enables a person to transform sand into sugar without being able to produce sugar to feed one’s population or for export.
Knowledge which satisfies the curiosity of the eye but does not satisfy human needs and wants is what constitutes mysticism. Before satisfying the curiosity of the eye by transforming human beings into monkeys one should rather transform monkeys into cows to provide abundant meat to save Africans from starvation.
What Africans need at this time of our history is the demystification of knowledge. It must be made a property of the people so that no one can mystify himself and herself as having divine powers.
What Africa needs is knowledge that can enable the people to take charge of knowledge and society to promote liberty and prosperity. Any knowledge that makes people to surrender their minds and powers to others and allow themselves to behave like marionettes at the mercy of others amounts to mystification of reality. From the North to the South of the Sahara, Africans of many generations have seen the most mysterious display of magical feat, but despite all that, malaria, war and poverty have been sending people into their graves and reducing the continent into a concert of highly indebted poor countries. The battle of the 21st Century is not to unite those who are mystifying African realities. On the contrary, it belongs to those who are ready to look at reality squarely in the face and try to shape nature and society to address their needs and aspirations to live in liberty, dignity and prosperity.
Source: Foroyaa Newspaper burning Issue
Issue No. 82/2007, 16 – 17 July 2007
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A clear conscience fears no accusation - proverb from Sierra Leone |
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