13 May 2010 By Reason Wafawarova THE dominance of Eurocentric values, the overriding
Western influence in world affairs and the rule of
imperial authority — where a European population
comprising 10 percent of the world’s population
dominates all others can only be explained and
understood by realising that Europeans dominate over
the 90 percent by lying, by deceit and by force. European history, Western values, as well as
Western democracy are all mythological concepts — they
are pretty much a well-packaged set of propaganda
designed to create in us a personality other than our
own, a culture divorced from our own reality, and
beliefs that have nothing or very little to do with
our own setting. The only way we can be in the condition we are in
as Africans today is to believe lies. What colonialism
and neo-colonialism have done since the 19th Century
is to reverse the African mentality and to make our
behaviour backwards. We have in many cases been made
to take the lie for the truth and the truth for the
lie. Jody Powell, who served under Jimmy Carter’s
administration, wrote in his book, “The Other Side of
The Story” that a minority in the world can only rule
by making backwards the mentality of the majority. This can only be achieved by reversing the truth,
creating lies and getting the majority to believe the
lies that the minority creates. Eurocentric history lies in many ways, and it even
lies when ostensibly telling the truth. An effective
propagandist does not tell too many big and obvious
lies. What he often does is to tell the truth in a way
that gets him to get where he wants to go. Institutions by their very nature are conservative
and in an oppressive society as is the world today,
institutions often serve to maintain the status quo.
Imperialism is one such institution, and all it seeks
is to maintain Western power and dominion. The consciousness of the African has been
falsified, our history has been concealed and our
achievements have been omitted. If one takes Egyptology for example; it becomes
clear that Europeans stole African history, completely
falsified it, and placed false identities on the
African Egyptian people. So we have many of our own people who read history
about our own Africa in great detail but project
whiteness right into it and that way whitewash their
own identity. Imperial subjugation has conditioned us to think in
some strange ways. When we hear the word “slave” for
example, many of us assume that the word talks about
us black people, as if no other people have ever been
enslaved. This is how the lie is created by the Eurocentric
sense of history. It always achieves this deceptive
end by making us misperceive reality and truth. The Western society gets away by pretending that it
is free and open. This is why we are bombarded with
tonnes and tonnes of information. The reality is that
our people are so mentally and motivationally
structured that most of them will not and cannot take
that information and transform it to our own
advantage. Eurocentric history functions as propaganda — a
term defined by Amos N. Wilson as “an effort to
persuade people to a point of view on an issue”. This
is a history that is used to intimidate Africans. We
have a history that inflates European achievements to
frightening levels and as a result we are left
convinced that our only hope is to hang around these
‘‘great’’ people, otherwise we are going back to the
Dark Ages. We have heard so many times that President Mugabe
is taking Zimbabwe to “the Dark Ages” through the land
reform programme and the indigenisation and economic
empowerment policies. Many of our own people even agree with this kind of
thinking. This is because colonialism and neo-colonialism
have destroyed our confidence. We have no capacity to comprehend a world greater
than the Eurocentric one that exists today, and we do
not believe that we can be capable of creating
anything as great or greater than what white
civilisation has created. This way we live in a social system that has
created a personality orientation of subjugation and
inferiority. We do not have to know the details of
European history; in fact most of our people do not
know those details at all. Without any content to back
it up, Eurocentric history thrives on its intimidatory
impression. That is the whole point; to leave an impression
that will become a dynamic source of behavioural
orientation towards the world. So our collective
personality must in this regard be impressed and
transformed in a fashion compatible with Western
interests. This is why the rationalisation of slavery as a
bygone must impress us; same goes for colonisation and
even imperialism. We have a Eurocentric sense of
history that rationalises Western domination. The only reason our culture and history have been
stolen from us is so that we can think that we had no
culture until the coloniser gave us his, or projected
his own upon us — so that we can feel that we are not
capable of culture, and of developing a culture of our
own. One effective way of justifying domination of
another people is stealing their history. Amos Wilson argues that history may be used to
influence personality, culture, roles, and even to
motivate us to commit suicide, to provoke to commit
what Dr Bobby Wright called “menticide” (mental
genocide), and may be used “to create or rationalise
fratricide, genocide and self-destruction.’’ Almost all of us have at one time attacked or
blamed someone wrongly because we had been given a
wrong history. So many murders have been perpetrated
because someone believed a lie. So many wars have been started because the
population was lied to and a history was projected in
such a way that it motivated people to kill. The
George W. Bush — Tony Blair — John Howard tripartite
Iraq lie of 2003 quickly comes to mind. So people kill, destroy, murder, engage in wars and
persecute other people because a certain history
creates that behaviour in them. Africa suffers today
because of a history that has caused this suffering. So history is no casual peripheral thing that one
just comes across as they pass through high school. It
is one’s total orientation towards the world. This is precisely why the European has arrogated
himself the role of the world’s sole valid historian.
He knows this way that he can shape a majority world
population that lives on lies presented as the truth. So we adopt these mythologies of democracy, human
rights, freedom and so on. A mythology is a form of denial of reality. We all
know the reality of colonial oppressors and we are all
clear on the evils of imperialism, at least most of us
Africans. We all inwardly admire Pan-Africanism and we
all inwardly want to control African resources, as any
people would want to do with their own resources. But when we belong to a political party like the
MDC-T, we are more than aware that we are receiving
funding and favours from the very oppressors from whom
we seek freedom. We then carry around painful
realities, memories and conscience. So how do we
survive this mental persecution? This is when you have to resort to functioning in
mythologies — if a memory is too painful to be
recalled, if recalling it means suffering, pain,
shame, guilt and other negative things, then we have
people denying the reality of that memory and
experience, and in some cases creating a mythology in
their place. These people then become obsessed with the created
mythology and they use it as a means of keeping out of
their conscious memory the traumatic experiences that
they fear so much. This explains the mythology in the MDC-T leadership
that says there are no economic sanctions on Zimbabwe
— a blatant lie that only serves to massage the guilt
in those that mobilised the sanctions in the first
place. It also explains the spirited denials by the
MDC-T leadership that they receive instructions from
London and Washington. It is a reality too painful to accept. It is a
reality that carries shame, pain, suffering and guilt. PF-Zapu was never ashamed of Russian backing during
the liberation struggle. Equally Zanu-PF was never
ashamed of Chinese, Romanian, Bulgarian and
Yugoslavian support when they waged the war to
liberate Zimbabwe. These are countries that never colonised Zimbabwe
and as such there is no sense of history that brings
with it a sense of shame, guilt or pain. So the Westerner has to repress painful information
to maintain his privileges over African resources. To
maintain the equilibrium, he needs to profit from the
lies he tells himself and others. So he thrives on the
lies he tells, the false perceptions and consciousness
he creates in himself and others. He tells himself that he alone names and describes
investment laws and market forces; he alone defines
democracy and human rights, he alone knows best what
constitutes terrorists and he alone fights just wars. He is aware that the truth and a more realistic
history will undermine his gains; so he maintains this
mythology that says all other people cannot do much
without his involvement. Realistic history is seen as an attack on the ego
of the European, an attack on his status and position
in the world; something known as “Western interests”
in the international relations lexicon. Westerners will always attack Afrocentric views
because to them real Africanness is a threat to their
privileges on the continent. The West talks so much against extremism and they
also preach so much for moderatism. When the coloniser established segregation laws in
Zimbabwe, the laws were against the good and the bad
black person, so were the apartheid laws in South
Africa, and equally both the good and bad “Negro” sat
at the back of the bus in the United States. But today we are told to consider the good white
person when redistributing our stolen land, to
consider the good white person when deciding who
should invest in our country and how, to remember the
good white person when we draft our own constitution
and so on. The West demands moderate conduct from the
Palestinians as if the ritual bombings they suffer at
the hands of Israelis each year are moderate. It is
demanded of Afghanis and Iraqis that they be moderate
with the Western invaders occupying their countries,
as if the invasion of these countries was in itself a
moderate idea. A mythology organises the world, organises
behaviour and it organises interpersonal and
intergroup relations. It provides answers, right or
wrong, correct or false; it does not matter. So we have this Western mythology being imposed
upon us and it reins because in life we need answers
since we cannot stand unanswered questions. This way
we are taken advantage of and the world is defined in
a certain way to us. Some Zimbabweans are having a heart attack over the
51 percent shareholding policy for local people; for
companies realising a turnover of over US$500 000.
They sincerely believe such a policy is “unrealistic”
and will make “investors run away”. This is exactly how the imperial mythology has
defined the world of business to these people. We cannot build a Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans on a
contrived history. We cannot have a national ideology that borrows
from a Eurocentric history and at the same time hope
to build a sustainable future for ourselves. Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome.
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