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The common opinion on this topic is that it’s the fault of us, the white, who did all these nasty things in the colonial period and later on, like slavery and ruthless exploitation of the continent. This has disrooted the Africans and they aren’t able to cope with this.
This was also my opinion – because you hear nothing else about it, even in school.
But is this the full truth? NO! say (even black) scientists. The biggest problems are homemade! Huge development sums trickle away useless, but whether globalisation neither the west is guilty.
Most of following text is based on the studies of the swiss ethnology professor David Signer, who has researched for years in Africa. He points out the reasons for the lagging political and economic situation.
Traditions refrain the progress. They are called: ancestor-cult, archaic time-understanding and the belief in witchcraft.
I want to start with three typical fates across the continent.
At first we have Jean-Claude, he is a clever young inhabitant of a small town in Cote d\'Ivoire. Like most of the people in his age, he does most of the time nothing. He complains about the lack of jobs and the stagnating economy, but suddenly he evinces the actual obstacle for Africa’s development: “Witchcraft.”
In Africa witchery is real. Witches eat achiever and students from their own relationship best. The soul of a family member is taken at night und eaten by a witchery-club. Due to this, the one who has been eaten looses his vitality, gets sick and dies. Then another member of the club has to offer a relative and so on. If someone sacrifices not steady, problems will be the consequence.
Another interesting peculiarity of Africa, there are no multi-storey buildings. If in Europe someone builds a two-storey building, his neighbour will build a three storey building and the next neighbour a four-storey one. This is fertile envy, but in Africa your neighbour will say: “You won’t get old in your house.”
In Jean-Claude’s relation, the brother of his dad thwarts all successes. Jean himself was a good pupil until he suddenly began to feel very unwell, his brain was empty and there was no chance to continue the school. Now his hopes lie in the lottery.
In contrast to Jean is Abou, also a young man living at the Cote d\'Ivoire, working. He has got a phone cabin and therefore a small income. But in fact he says it’s better to do nothing, than working. Everyday ten people phone on tick (auf Pump) and another ten people peeve him to cadge money. In the end of a month he has sure eaten, like the others – but there is no money left. For now 2 years Abou is sweating everyday at his cabin in the sun, but not coming forward a bit – he likes to migrate to London. Beside his phone cabin he has got a retail trade and so all conditions to make headway. But what detains him from having success? The reason is the prevalent social system, it’s an African duty to share permanent everything and so nothing can be saved. If he wouldn’t be so “generous” the others would turn his life to hell.
He is a good example to express the dilemma of jointly living combined with cannibalism.
The next narrative happened to a young woman from Ghana, she tells about the consequences, which resulted from her fast ascent.
Her elder brother died in a car accident, but when they got into the matter, they discovered that his heart was torn out. Another brother studied in Canada, when he came to visit the village a witch “lashed” him and he got sick. Until today he isn’t back at the varsity. Her other five brothers want to stay abroad the rest of their life, they are too afraid to come back.
She got impaired visions when she had to do her exam. When she went to a city away from her village to buy a spectacle, she suddenly could see clearly again. Due to this she decided to move away from her village – in Africa a too fast growing gets decapitated.
Out of these examples can be seen some common truths.
It’s not important, whether such narratives are true. The point is: They show a persuasion across all classes of population => Moving up is dangerous!
If you don’t accept this simple rule, you will conjure up jealousy in the others, which causes big problems. So better stay down and poise at your ancestral place.
A flight away from the relatedness or even out of Africa is an easement, but the witchery threats can make sick or mad all over the world.
In Africa witchery is no fantasy, it’s a social reality. In other words we can call the “witchery” cannibalistically or vampirish social relations, where the poor take from the rich without getting richer. All according to the motto: You shouldn’t have a better live than me.
If somebody doesn’t believe in witchcrafts, he surely will perish in the destructive jealousy of the African society. This force is more powerful than just backwardly credulity.
The pressure on somebody, who has something, is infinitely from the relatedness. Witchery can grow in such a society where greed and jealousy rule. Every profit of someone is sensed like a loss for another.
The stagnating economy can here also be seen in the social relations. Acquired status, like accomplishment, work or knowledge count more than ascribes, by age or gender. Fortune isn’t found in initiative of one’s own, but in subordination to a patron, who has to take care for one. This forms a society without work ethic, where success is found in luck, magic and the favour of others.
So it’s logical that success has to be shared with all, because there is no imagination of “well deserved personal estate”.
Let’s take a closer look to the first African commandment:
You shouldn’t try to elevate above the prevail conditions or even outstrip equal or upper.
I want to begin with the most important parts of a society: families. Children are not allowed to do better than their elder brother or even their father, the other way round would be downed by witchery – in other words the castrating force of the African society.
But what is the situation nowadays? Schools, Universities and modern Jobs require the exact contrast. So a system, which was stable in separated villages, causes in conditions of free market economy and democracy the paralysis of all enterprisingly people.
Another peculiarity of Africa is the widespread patron-client-relationship.
A white or just well clothed visitor wonders quickly why totally unknown people call him “patron”, “grand” or “boss” on the street. The solution is it’s a common method in Africa to get money. They make themselves tiny and appeal to the bounty of the “boss”. If they don’t get what they want, the “petit fère” – little brother – has his methods to turn the “grand fère’s” life to hell.
With this System even large concerns and states are organized. The patron gives work and is responsible for wide parts in the client’s life. Bosses legitimize themselves by showing their personal affluence and paying for the network on which their might base on.
But calling this clientism a modern administration would really be a joke.
Most of the tribe wars in Africa have no real ethnical reasons, but economic ones. If one group – for example the Tutsi in Burundi – dominate for years another group – here we have the Hutu – the opposition wants the position of the dominating and here the situation escalated with the Genocide in 1972. It’s the job of African politicians keep social balance, if they fail the career of them is over.
Solidarity is kinsmanlike organized and not with taxes or insurances, so if a hunger catastrophe concerns a whole population group, they cannot expect help from the state.
Now let’s come back to witchery. Not all witches have the same status, little witches are avoided or even dislodged, but capital witches are reverential endured. For example Houphouët-Boigny, ex-president of Cote d\'Ivoire, who used the revenue to make his hometown the capital city with a copy of the Petersdom.
The point is there is no difference if social climbers are intimidated by witches or scorned as witches – the effect is the same: no ordinary social mobility exists.
The next interesting topic is Africa’s special behaviour with time, the only thing which they have in abundance.
Past and present are both work of the forefathers and the future is a respectful repetition of passed. Any other way of life would be a stupid presumption.
The modern time perception is sensed as unnatural, because like a popular saying says: “Not the clock invented the humans…”
People in Africa are often able to tell the names from 15 generations of forefathers, not surprising that an African sociologist mentioned:
“The millennium old wisdom of Africa is wisdom of the preservation of basics – a wisdom which excludes new.”
This makes it also very easy for tyrants today to deflect their own responsibility on the wicked white from the past and present.
Now it’s understandable why Africans always complain so much when coffee or cocoa prices fall, which are just a cause of modern economy. They are angry that some villain unsettles the invariable order of things.
In a queue the time factor in Africa is clearly evident. Like the duty to respect the past, waiting for the boss is also a task, which has to be followed. This is practised through all social layers and shows the might differences between people. To comply with a clock would be abusive or more, revolutionary, but Revolutions don’t conform to the principles of continuousness and recurrence.
In contrary to the rest of the world, Africa seldom had social or culture revolutions. Barely intensions are made for a new structured society. This will stay that way if the Africans don’t stop to blame always slavery, colonialism, World Bank, globalisation or too little development money for their misery. Ok, these factors exist, but who can afford decades long the same attitude: It’s all the fault of others.
Now let’s see a wider view of the relation between Europe and Africa. The following these was created by a publicist from Cameroon.
The main statement is: Africa’s attitude as a whole to Europe is like a passive begging client. Furthermore Africans don’t catch that they themselves have to be responsible for their development and not others.
Everybody knows that taking credits from abroad isn’t a disgrace for African’s, but hardly anybody knows the reason. It’s because they don’t feel accountable for the present.
So reproaches to a stingy Europe by an aggrieved feeling Africa are just the transmission of a relation sample which embosses Africa’s social system.
Summarised the sample is manifested in the hierarchical society order, which contains the patron-client-sample, avoiding of competition and the conviction that every evil comes from outside.
A reproach which is often made on Africans is that their inability to save money results out of their short-sighted, careless lifestyle. But here the real reason can also be found in the social system, because the familiar liabilities impede such intensions nearly always.
This leads to the next conspicuousness – most of the shops in Africa are owned by Indian or Arabs. They are not influenced by downing family obligations.
The upper class of Africa tries to be like them and builds immense ramparts round their property. So only the normal people have to be solitary with the poor and the rich stay by themselves.
A lot of people who want to have success migrate, to escape from the basic demands and expectations. But witchery isn’t bound to a continent, because the fear of it can make sick – psychical and physical – everywhere. Here another person comes into the play, the Fetícheur. His job is the disposal of sacrifices like chicks or sheep. Studies show that almost fifthly percent of African city dwellers sacrifice steady. This can soothe the conscience, but is definitely no way out of the witchery-economy. Sayings from Mali or Senegal show the African attitude best: “Failure will be pardoned, success not!” or “If I can’t eat your money, I eat yourself!”
Are there any ways outs of this continental self-mutilation?
In fact the west can’t really do something for Africa, even the decrease of development money is seen as a chance for the continent, because the help projects always respected the traditional morals. Development in Africa also wouldn’t start when they would get plenty milliards of €. Finally they have to get by alone.
Here some interesting local basic approach can be picked out. For example the “Tontine”, this is a kind of a save pot where a group of people continuously pay in money and with the gathered sum a larger invention can be afforded. This system works with good with the African solidarity and abusiveness is very seldom.
Such collective self-help-systems are found now more often in whole Western Africa. The point here is everyone profits from the success of the other one. This is also the reason why Africans can do well in sports and music, it’s because every goal or song is for everybody.
Here the player or singer is an accepted represent for all. If this perception, that every effort is good for the community would be accepted in all activities, then the cult of mediocrity would maybe end.
Another very interesting development is going on in religious region. The Mourides, an Islamic brotherhood in Senegal persecute a strict save and work moral under a religious patron called “Marabout”.
Even the president of Senegal is a Mouride. He is one of the initiators of the”New Partnership for Africa’s Development” (NEPAD). The organisation sees the immense potentials and resources of Africa and also their own problems which cause the misery today. And so they want to use Africa’s own resources for the coming developments.
This organisation has the same intensions like Thomas Sankara, who had been president of Burkina Faso. He was considered by some to be an “African Che Guevara” and used to say: “You have to be a contrarian with courage to decline old formulas. Then you can invent the future new.”
In 1987 he was murdered by a colleague, who rules the land till today.
But the hope that Africa gets ahead is alive.
I spent a lot of time to write this text, because I think it contains very interesting knowledge, which is not very common. It formed a new understanding for Africa in me and so I hope it also does to everybody, who gets in contact with these facts.
I’m afraid the text seems unstructured, but the structure is based on giving piece for piece more understandable information to the reader and I think it’s ok that way.
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