African, Do You Think?

Editor’s note: The inhabitants of the great African continent still have not taught themselves to see above the lines of hatred, ignorance and arrogance toward each other. Instead of uniting and showing solidarity in the name of development and growth, citizens of African countries clash and show hostility. Yes, Africans can think, Professor Pius Adesanmi says, but do they?

The white man’s question mark preceded the white man’s knife. Before the white man put a knife on the things that held us together (apologies to Papa Chinua Achebe), he first put a question mark on our ability to think: can the African think? Can the black man think?

The white man answered no.

We survived his knife. We are still here. Our divided black asses are still here as proof that we survived the white man’s knife. What we have never really survived is the white man’s question mark: can the African think?

Once we acquired enough English, French, and Portuguese to understand that the white man was asking this question about us, we pretty much spent more than a century screaming yes we can!

We produced Egyptology, Negritude, pan-Africanism, decolonization and other discourses of political and cultural affirmation. Through such discourses, we sought to demonstrate the anteriority of our thought. And the superiority of it. We claimed that we suffered historical truncation of thought in slavery and colonialism and the attendant inferiority complex they inflicted on us.

If you ask me, I think we have even reached a point where the opinion of the white man no longer matters. Whether he believes that we can think or not is his own problem, not ours.

At any rate, the white man has also evolved in his perception of us. He was wondering whether we could think or not when he had some suspicion that, perhaps, we mattered somehow and somewhat in the scheme of things. Now that he is convinced that we don’t really matter, he has transferred us to the province of levity. He handles us with levity.

Levity is when the the BBC casually reports errors about us because we are not even worth rigour and fact checking.

We are… warrever!

A Nigerian mathematician has solved the Riemann hypothesis — the BBC. Oh, BBC, but that’s not true. Couldn’t you have fact-checked before you reported this? Warrever!

Five hundred Nigerians were recently deported by the British Government – the BBC. Oh, BBC, but that’s not true. Only fifty were actually deported. Couldn’t you have fact-checked before you reported this? Warrever!

When you are warrever; when you are no longer worth the rigour of fact-checking; when you are no longer worth the labour of accuracy, when anybody can just up and report just about anything about you, with a great deal of over-reporting or under-reporting – anything but accurate reporting – your reaction to such an existential condition is how we gauge not whether you can think or not but whether you do think at all.

Africa can think but does Africa think? That is the question.

So the BBC has been treating Africa with a great deal of levity lately. One false report after one false report because we are not worth rigour; we are not worth fact-checking. And we are certainly not worth the labour of correction when error is proven. To BBC, we are… warrever!

What do Africans do after each report?

They congregate in their black-assed nakedness around the Master’s platforms to tear at each other; to tear each other down; to hurl unmentionable expletives at each other on the basis of nationalities and borders they did not even invent.

Five hundred Nigerians have been deported! screams the BBC and retires to watch the ensuing mud fight by Africans who can think but do not think.

In the comments section of this erroneous report, a continent that does not think troops out from Cape to Cairo.

“Good for those Nigerian mothafokas,” screams the poverty-stricken South African black from his tin shack in Soweto, “they are all bastards. They are the shame of the continent! We should drive all of them out of here too with their drugs and crimes”.

Nigerians reply him using worse expletives. They remind him that he is a black slave who does not own the first-world infrastructure that is getting him drunk. They remind him that everything that is 21st century in South Africa is still in white hands, leaving his black ass with only poverty and misguided xenophobia.

The Kenyan, the Malawian, the Zambian, the Gambian, and the Ghanaian – they all rush in, echoing the South African. They all describe Nigeria and the Nigerian in adjectives and expletives that are so sick I cannot write them here. More Nigerians rush in, trying to show their African traducers that 180 million of them can produce enough unprintable expletives to sink the rest of the continent. They describe the Kenyans and the Malawians and the Zambians and the South Africans and the Ghanaians in terms that make them inferior to orangutans.

Practically every African nationality joins in the free-for-all curse-fest occasioned by a grossly exaggerated and erroneous report by the BBC.

The BBC leaves the thread open. The error is not corrected. Somebody somewhere in London must derive enormous pleasure watching thousands of unthinking Africans come to the white man’s platform to strip themselves naked, strip Africa naked over borders and nationalities they did not invent.

Why should your heart harbour only hate for your brother and your sister just because they fall outside of lines drawn by white plunderers in Berlin in 1884? Were your fathers invited to the meeting when those lines were drawn?

African, do you think?

Lucky Dube wanted you to think. That is why he said to you: “Bob Marley said how long shall they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look. Little did he know that eventually the enemy will stand aside and look while we slash and kill our own brothers”.

African, do you think?

No, you don’t. That is why you are on display, slashing and killing yourselves in commentary threads of the BBC over fake reports while the European owners of that platform stand aside and look.

And that is why Lucky Dube feared your black ass and your black heart and said to you: “Not every black man is my brother; not every white man is my enemy”.

And you killed him. He was silenced by your wicked black hands.

And you take your hate and your divisions to Facebook and Twitter. Every platform of global connectedness invented by the white man, you invade it with your land borders and your nationalities: Nigeria versus Ghana versus Gambia versus Malawi versus Kenya versus South Africa versus Zimbabwe; black Africa versus white Arab Africa.

And you fight and fight and fight.

And the enemy stands aside and looks.

And the language of abuse stinks – while the enemy who invented those platforms stands aside and look because your lazy African asses will not invent same.

The continent with the youngest people on earth is manufacturing a youth bulge of haters. Haters of their African brothers. Haters of their African sisters.

In the continent’s universities, a new generation of firebrand scholars and thinkers are screaming pan-Africanism but they inhabit a bubble which has no answers to this growing culture of hate. Their work is not speaking to the hundreds of thousands of Africans on the street who wake up daily to curse and hate Africans they have othered on the basis of identities invented behind their backs in Berlin.

Does Africa think?

Pius Adesanmi is a professor of English and African Studies at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. In 2010, he was awarded the inaugural Penguin Prize for African Writing. A widely-cited commentator on Nigerian and African affairs, he has lectured in African, European, and North American universities, and also regularly addresses non-academic audiences across Africa. Follow him on Twitter @pius_adesanmi.

The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily represent the editorial policy of Naij.com.

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