from: Ouko joachim omolo
The News Dispatch with Omolo Beste in images
WEDNESDAY, MAY 28, 2013
Fr Joachim Omolo Ouko, AJ
Tel +254 7350 14559/+254 722 623 578
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Real change must come from ordinary people who refuse to be taken hostage by the weapons of politicians in the face of inequality, racism and oppression, but march together towards a clear and unambiguous goal.
-Anne Montgomery, RSCJ UN Disarmament Conference, 2002
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TIME AFRICANS TOOK THEMSELVES SERIOUSLY AS AU TURNS 50
STORY BY CHRISPIN ONYANGO-NAIROBI
In some part of History of Philosophy, there was a time when European Philosophers were convinced that the way in which they saw things was the only true one. When the first travelers and explorers came to Africa, they noticed that people were different from the Europeans in many ways, not only in their skin color, but also in the way they dealt with life.
This led European philosophers like G.F. Hegel to believe that Africans were irrational. Hegel, who relied on accounts from European explorers, maintained that Africans had no culture and therefore no reason, no religion and no history. He thought that they lived in a state of innocence, unconscious of themselves. Hegel’s ideas were supported by then French Anthropologist L. Levi – Bruhl.
He spoke of the ‘pre – logical mind’ of the Africans, similar to the mind of the small children. He divided human societies into two types: the civilized (Europe) and the primitive (Africa); or the healthy on one side, and the sick, savage and inferior on the other.
Later on the other hand in 1930 a Belgian Missionary working in Congo: the Franciscan Fr. Placid Tempels basing himself on his own observations wrote: “To declare that primitive peoples are completely lacking in logic, is simply to turn one’s back in reality.
Every day we are able to note that primitive peoples are by no means just children afflicted with a bizarre imagination.” He wrote for European readers and Missionaries. His famous book, Bantu Philosophy, was a kind of guide to understand the Bantu soul.
He explained that for the Bantu all beings – human, animal, vegetable and inanimate have their ‘vital force’. Among the created beings, the human being stands in the centre.
Tempels wanted to show that it was wrong to think of Africans as uncivilized and primitive, that their behavior was guided not by the absence of logic, but by the use of a complex logic, which differed from Western logic. Who, after all, has the right to believe that one’s own way of thinking is the only right way? Unfortunately, this was the attitude of the West for centuries.
African Philosophers such as D A Masolo and P. Hountondji made great efforts to liberate African intellectually from the West and to stand on her own feet. They were united in their struggle for a search of a true African identity, which of course varies according to the different cultures and traditions.
It is a struggle quite similar to the struggle for independence of Jomo Kenyatta, Kwame Nkrumah, Leopold Senghor and Julius Nyerere. As Hountondji says to Africas, “the time has come to take ourselves seriously”.
Our effort will be seen from our political, economic and social life. I f we make progress then our enemies from the West will respect us or else we shall remain at their mercy forever.
To achieve all these we need servant leaders not like our current Members of Parliament who are hungry for wealth. Gone are the days when Africans were seen as inferior to the Europeans.
Unfortunately, even many educated Africans have adopted this view of Africa as a primitive and uncivilized continent. They often look at their African mother tongue as inferior, and prefer to speak English, Italian, French, and German among other foreign languages.