Post by Deleted on May 27, 2007 6:46:23 GMT 3
www.eastandard.net/hm_news/news.php?articleid=1143969134
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By Winsley Masese
"We dreaded the journey a century ago but it was the only escape from abject poverty"
Henry M Stanley, Vasco Da Gama, David Livingstone, and John H Speke are among first Europeans explorers to set foot in Africa, besides being said to have discovered a river here or a mountain there.
They are also said to have opened up the continent to the outside world and its civilisation. Yet, when some Africans try to reach Europe, they are declared to be illegal migrants and oft times, are subjected to humiliation.
Human existence is never complete without their movement or migration in search of better living environments or friendly neighbours. The possible outcome is either rejection or acceptance. Perhaps, the search is an ideal one, thus the struggle for the futile state of equilibrium.
For the Europeans, a mixture of adventure, greed and idealism first drove them to foreign lands. With their military, economic and technological supremacy, the people of other continents were easy prey to suppression.
Whatever they wanted and thought that it would be of importance to their set up, they just got it or simply grabbed it.
Sir Charles Elliot, the First Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate (1894) said, "We have in East Africa the rare experience of dealing with a tabula rasa, an almost untouched and sparsely inhabited country where we can do as we will."
Against this backdrop were racial bigotry, slave trade and slavery, crimes that characterised the height of colonial imperialism.
The people of Africa in America’s southern states did not go there as tourists. Their ancestors were dragged while screaming and wailing into the ships that took them there as slaves. They were full-blooded
Africans whose labour built the wealth of the country and the empire we now call the United States of America.
Labour unpaid for, taken through violence, was shipped to the Caribbean and America under conditions that destroyed life in the interests of maximum profit. Once in the Americas, Africans were forced to work on plantations owned by Europeans, cultivating sugar and cotton for the enrichment of Europeans in America and Europe.
Ironically, the most dreaded journey a century or so ago is the most cherished and perceived as the only escape from the pangs of abject poverty, wars, starvation, and HIV/Aids.
The would-be illegal migrants — mostly from Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Gambia, the Canary Island — presents the hope of escaping from the weary continent. The migrant traffickers travel long distances in rickety boats, which often capsize or if they are caught, are sent back to their poverty-stricken countries.
Inasmuch as we were seen as barbaric and backward, thus the need to be civilised, the search for those values has cost the African a lot. As we strive to live, eat, sleep, walk, dance, smile and possibly drink like our colonisers, our resources continue to benefit them. The search for an African is multi-pronged. There are refugees, fleeing from their homes, the political asylum seekers, those after the greener pastures and even the students seeking western space in western colleges.
We continue to make them benefit from our sweat like no other time in history. We only get back a paltry of our contribution towards their development in terms of aid grants or emergencies when man-made or natural disasters wreak havoc.
Creating a better environment so as to exploit our full potentials is never among the leaders’ priorities. Theirs is only to import high cost vehicles, clothes, and jewellery at the expense of the common man. They loot and salt away a substantial amount of the resources. No wonder we continue begging for assistance whenever we are stretched beyond capacity.
In the book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon writes, ‘The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only absence of values, but also the negation of values.
He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense, he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality.’
The search for values we are striving for is polarising and balkanising our respective countries along tribal, regional and ethnic lines. This has seen a skewed and uneven allocation of national resources to a point that some parts remain virtually poor only contributing to the development of other parts.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi
Journey to the West turns into a dream
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By Winsley Masese
"We dreaded the journey a century ago but it was the only escape from abject poverty"
Henry M Stanley, Vasco Da Gama, David Livingstone, and John H Speke are among first Europeans explorers to set foot in Africa, besides being said to have discovered a river here or a mountain there.
They are also said to have opened up the continent to the outside world and its civilisation. Yet, when some Africans try to reach Europe, they are declared to be illegal migrants and oft times, are subjected to humiliation.
Human existence is never complete without their movement or migration in search of better living environments or friendly neighbours. The possible outcome is either rejection or acceptance. Perhaps, the search is an ideal one, thus the struggle for the futile state of equilibrium.
For the Europeans, a mixture of adventure, greed and idealism first drove them to foreign lands. With their military, economic and technological supremacy, the people of other continents were easy prey to suppression.
Whatever they wanted and thought that it would be of importance to their set up, they just got it or simply grabbed it.
Sir Charles Elliot, the First Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate (1894) said, "We have in East Africa the rare experience of dealing with a tabula rasa, an almost untouched and sparsely inhabited country where we can do as we will."
Against this backdrop were racial bigotry, slave trade and slavery, crimes that characterised the height of colonial imperialism.
The people of Africa in America’s southern states did not go there as tourists. Their ancestors were dragged while screaming and wailing into the ships that took them there as slaves. They were full-blooded
Africans whose labour built the wealth of the country and the empire we now call the United States of America.
Labour unpaid for, taken through violence, was shipped to the Caribbean and America under conditions that destroyed life in the interests of maximum profit. Once in the Americas, Africans were forced to work on plantations owned by Europeans, cultivating sugar and cotton for the enrichment of Europeans in America and Europe.
Ironically, the most dreaded journey a century or so ago is the most cherished and perceived as the only escape from the pangs of abject poverty, wars, starvation, and HIV/Aids.
The would-be illegal migrants — mostly from Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, and Gambia, the Canary Island — presents the hope of escaping from the weary continent. The migrant traffickers travel long distances in rickety boats, which often capsize or if they are caught, are sent back to their poverty-stricken countries.
Inasmuch as we were seen as barbaric and backward, thus the need to be civilised, the search for those values has cost the African a lot. As we strive to live, eat, sleep, walk, dance, smile and possibly drink like our colonisers, our resources continue to benefit them. The search for an African is multi-pronged. There are refugees, fleeing from their homes, the political asylum seekers, those after the greener pastures and even the students seeking western space in western colleges.
We continue to make them benefit from our sweat like no other time in history. We only get back a paltry of our contribution towards their development in terms of aid grants or emergencies when man-made or natural disasters wreak havoc.
Creating a better environment so as to exploit our full potentials is never among the leaders’ priorities. Theirs is only to import high cost vehicles, clothes, and jewellery at the expense of the common man. They loot and salt away a substantial amount of the resources. No wonder we continue begging for assistance whenever we are stretched beyond capacity.
In the book The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon writes, ‘The native is declared insensible to ethics; he represents not only absence of values, but also the negation of values.
He is, let us dare to admit, the enemy of values, and in this sense, he is the absolute evil. He is the corrosive element destroying all that comes near him; he is the deforming element disfiguring all that has to do with beauty or morality.’
The search for values we are striving for is polarising and balkanising our respective countries along tribal, regional and ethnic lines. This has seen a skewed and uneven allocation of national resources to a point that some parts remain virtually poor only contributing to the development of other parts.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Nairobi