Cultural Genocide: A Well-Calculated Assault on the Afrikan Culture
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The true size of Africa
By Mabil Manyok Nhial, Gweru, Zimbabwe
Tuesday, January 21, 2020 (PW) — An American writer of a dystopian novel, ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ asserts that “you don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.” Denotatively, when one intends to efface a people’s culture, they do so by simply introducing an alien culture, which will definitely take its root in lieu of what has been intended to be extirpated thereof! This is exactly what the ‘Kawajat’ did when they stepped on Afrikan soil.
It is a known fact that every people or a nation is attached to its culture by an intricate tapestry of cultural norms, customs, values, and its own history. In order to understand a people’s culture, one has to fully explore a history interlaced therewith, because the impact of culture on its people is that it is born of its multifaceted entity that gives strength, identity, a sense of belonging, and the purpose to its people. This article shall, therefore, delve into a symbolic demise of Afrikan culture, which was premeditated by the ‘Kawajat’ when they set their feet on the Continent.
Afrikan History has never been silent about hideous, if not heinous tragic stories pertaining to gruesome killings of Afrikan leaders, who were symbols of Afrikan culture. In Kenya, when the British saw a united people with unique culture, they frowned upon the superiority of this culture and the seamless concinnity of the people therein. The British under Fredrick Lugard lured the Kikuyu leader in the name of Waiyaki wa Hinga into signing a spurious peace deal after a bitter duel of resisting and rejecting the nettlesome western culture dressed in suits of ‘civilisation.’
After what seemed a blink of an eye, they captured Waiyaki and buried him alive along the way from the interior to the Coast at Kibwezi. Ghastly enough, they did not only bury him alive, but they did so while having his head facing the bowl of the earth, which is against the Kikuyu culture of burying the dead with their head facing Mount Kenya, the home of their Deity, Murungu! The grisly murder with the repellent burial, indicated a symbolic disappearance of the Kikuyu culture.
Besides, the macabre massacre, mutilations and decapitations of heroes of Herero and Nama chiefs and whatnot, are other thought-provoking incidents that must not be left unmentioned. Against the culture of the Herero and Nama of Namibia, the decapitation of chiefs like hero Maharero of the Herero and taking of their heads and other body parts to Germany as it was germane to the Germans, marked the end of the beginning of the victory of evil over good! The in Germans imposed their strange, appalling culture on the Herero and the Name people after the symbolic assassination of their culture in form of the demise of their (Herero and Nama) leaders. The unparalleled culture of the cultured people was and still is no more!
Troubling the already troubled waters, is the capture and beheading of Hintsa, the famous king of Xhosaland, present day, Eastern Cape, South Afrika. His head, like Maori’s, was taken to the British Museum by the good British of the time. This was and still is not only a rebarbative act against the Xhosa, but it’s also against the culture of burying a deceased person with their whole body! The death of Hintsa symbolised a cultural assassination of the Xhosa people since they soon succumbed to the western culture soon after the death of their king.
Worse still, the removal of sika’dwa (the Ashanti’s Golden Stool, which symbolised their nationhood), portrayed the demise of the Ashanti culture. The then British Administrator in the then Gold Coast, now Ghana, took it as s symbol of glory and colonialism. Additionally, the destruction of the Wall of the Kingdom of Benin and the subsequent removal of the paraphernalia of the King cannot be gainsaid. This marked the end of the biggest ever existed kingdom in western Sudan (West Afrika). After the obliteration of lives of leaders and the destruction of kingdoms, the British replaced the culture that existed ab initio with their disgusting culture!
In a nutshell, the pith of the story is not just about the brutal killings or whatever happened thereto. It is about a premeditated hijack and well calculated assassination Afrikan culture which was symbolised by unnatural deaths of Afrikan leaders. Afrikan cultural values, norms, and customs were replaced with a toxic, nettlesome and malodorous ‘civilisation,’ which subsequently marked the beginning of a loose, bumptious society that lacks gumption and taboos! Unless we fling away some scintilla of this foreign culture, which has intricately fixed its root in us, we will continue peddling against the tides and getting lost in the middle of nowhere!
The writer is a teacher at Malek Secondary School. He is currently in his fifth year studying a Bachelor of Laws (Honours) Degree at Midlands State University, Zimbabwe. He can be reached via: johnmabilmanyok@gmail.com
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