“My majesty Mr. Queen Sir, horrible Ministers and Members of Parliament, invented guests, ladies under gentlemen. I hereby thank you completely… Mr. Queen, Sir, we have really eaten very much. And we are fed up completely… I wish to invitation you Mr. Queen, to become home to Uganda so that we can also revenge on you.”
TO HER Majesty the Queen from His Excellency. President for Life, Field Marshall, Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC Lord of all the beasts of the earth and fishes of the sea and conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in general and Uganda in particular.
We have been wandering in the wilderness and musing and dreaming about world affairs, in general the (Russian-Ukrainian war) then Africa and Ghana, in particular.
In our wild dreams, while going on a wild goose chase, we have a beautiful picture of future Africa and Ghana in the nirvana (paradise). Martin Luther King Junior’s 1963 speech “I have a dream…” becomes relevant, and we pause on Thomas More’s 1516 ‘Utopia’ (Latin: Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula utopia: A little true book, not less beneficial than enjoyable, about how things should be in a state and about the new island utopia). By some strange accident, we lay hands on Joseph Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem: “The White Man’s Burden” and ponder over the pages, where Kipling exhorts the white race: “Take up the white man’s burden – send forth the best ye breed – go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives’ need; to wait in heavy harness on fluttered folk and half – your new-caught, sullen peoples, half devil and half child… take up the white man’s burden – the savage wars of peace – take up the white man’s burden -Ye dare not stoop to less nor call too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness …”
In the poem, Kipling is urging the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country. John Bull (Britain) and Uncle Sam (US) were to deliver the world’s people of colour – and these included Africans (Zulu) China and India – from barbarism, ignorance and disease. Yet Kipling warns of (the burden) that is personal costs, hardships endured and even deaths -resulting from empire building.
Senator Tillman, in an address to US President William McKinley, noted: “…This poem (by Rudyard Kipling, the greatest poet of England), unique, and in some places too deep for me, is a prophecy…” those (Filipino) people are not ready for liberty as we understand it. They do not want it. Why are we bent on forcing upon a civilisation not suited to them and which only means in their view, degradation and a loss of self-respect, which is worse than the loss of life itself?”
Kipling’s poem paints the picture of the dark races’ backwardness in politics sociology, culture, religion, values and ethics. The white man’s burden has its roots in the Biblical story “The curse of Ham” (Genesis chapter 9) when Noah cursed his son, Ham who saw his father sleeping naked and called his brothers Shem and Japheth who covered him with cloth. and Noah cursed Ham to have his descendants become slaves! “And he said, ‘cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren…Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.”
Thomas Jefferson, the American politician, scientist, and slave owner, did not believe in the equality of races and claimed that the black people were inferior to the white in body and mind. David Cody argued that: “The (British) empire existed not for the benefit-economic or strategic or otherwise – of Britain itself, but in order that primitive people, incapable of self-government, could, with British guidance, eventually become civilised (and Christianised).
Men and women of colour imperialists have indeed suffered at the hands of imperialists: chained Africans, feeding crocodiles with black babies, water torture of prisoners of war. But not all whites took the imperialist posture. Mark Twain, the poet, for example wrote “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” as a rejoinder to Kipling’s poem. Mark Twain (pen-name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens) noted: “We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way.” In the poem, Mark Twain proclaims: “True we have crushed a deceived and confiding people, we have turned against the weak and the friendless who trusted us, we have stamped out a just and intelligent and well-ordered republic, we have stabbed an ally in the back and slapped the face of a guest…we have robbed a trusting friend of his land and his liberty…”
We look at African leaders…what are they doing to rid their people of poverty? The “Man-of-the-People” or “Butcher of Uganda”, Idi Amin, ruled eight years after overthrowing Milton Obote in January 1971, enjoyed his “greatness” by getting whites to carry him, handed over to Ugandans the businesses of expelled Asians, confessed to cannibalism…He suffered syphilis…Israeli elite army rescued Israeli hostages in Entebbe Airport Raid (Operation Thunderbolt) in July 1976, then Tanzania President Julius Nyerere got Idi Amin overthrown in 1979…Idi Amin left for Libya, then Iraq and finally Saudi Arabia where he died in 2003.
Jacob Zuma, with a large estate, acquired during his presidency, the immense wealth of Togo’s Eyadema, and that of Zaire’s Mobutu, and Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been in power for 43 years, and is seeking a sixth term of re-election. The 80-year-old politician took power in Equatorial Guinea in a military coup in 1979 from his uncle dictator Francisco Macias Nguema, getting his uncle shot two months later. Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s oil-rich Central African country is fabulously wealthy but the wealth is concentrated in few families, with 80% of the 1.4 million population living below the poverty line (less than $1.9 per day, according to Bretton Woods) Obiang’s Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea (PDGE) holds 99 of the 100 seats in the National Assembly.
So, we go to the 1953 Dr. Raphael Ernest Grail Armattoe’s “Deep Down the Blackman’s Mind.” What do you expect to read about the poetry of this world-renowned scientist? Or Anton Wilhelm Amo of Axim, with his Philosophy of the Mind (1750), quoted by Dr Kwame Nkrumah: “The Blackman is capable of managing his own affairs”. So, in our wild dreams, we reflect on why teachers punish students for speaking Twi or any local dialect instead of English. We note the Twi version of the National Anthem: “God bless our home-land, Ghana … (Nyame hyira yen man, Ghana, Ma yennye oman-kese na to no ahocden…) have we thanked the melodious-voiced John B.K. Amoah sufficiently for getting his group to sing the anthem in eleven (11) local languages? Think about the original first verse: “Lift high the flag of Ghana…” in our youthful school days, or “Yen ara asaase nie…adu me ne wo nso …nimdee ntraso, nkotokrane ne apesemenko-menya…Greed, selfishness, avarice…
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By Africanus Owusu-Ansah