| Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery |
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THE WRITER: Tujadeen |
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One of my favorite lines from the stupendously gifted career of the Late Bob Marley is: ‘Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds’. The unfortunate thing is that many
Africans will know this line, many have danced and more will dance to it
but how many have really reflected on it and of those how many are
acting on the profound mental transformation that Marley was calling
for.
The evidence of inaction is there to see all around us every day. Just
last week I was passing through an African airport where chaos that one
has become accustomed to is now compounded by the over zealous African
reaction to Post September 11 whimsical security demands of a paranoid
US government. Like lambs to the slaughter hundreds of passengers had to line up to have their bags individually examined by security and
immigration officials who did not seem in a hurry. However, a certain
brisk efficiency overpowers the
m when those who know how the system
works ‘greet’ ‘or ‘throaway salute’ at them. Naïve me I was expecting
that everybody will get to the tables according to how they stood in the
queue not realising that there were virtual parallel lines around the
patient law-abiding one.
Then a gentleman came, cut through the line and went over to one of the
officials searching the luggage and mumbled in her ears and she tore out
three security clearance tickets for him. This guy then proceeded to
remove some baggage from the queue and asked their owners to leave the
queue, “Everything is ok” he announced triumphantly. A middle aged
British (white) couple and their teenage co-traveler thus abandoned the
queue to follow their ‘liberator’. As you can imagine, I was livid and I
challenged both the official and the unidentified interlocutor on their
behavior. One reacted that they were ‘important people’ and the other
quickly added ‘they
are diplomats from the British High Commission’.
This is a country in which expansive arrangements are made to ‘observe
all protocols’ even in the smallest of social gathering so that the
prestige of any local champion does not suffer lack of recognition.
Therefore it is impossible that it will not have separate facilities for
checking in ‘important people’ and ‘diplomats’ for that matter. But be
that as it may it should not matter what status one is as long as you
are on the queue the same rule should apply. In any case the people were
already on the queue before the ‘express driver’ came.
Of course verbal warfare ensued between these officials and myself and I
gave them a piece of my mind even with a few unprintable words thrown
in. Most of the other passengers kept nodding their approval and some
edging me on as I went to town on these irresponsible officials. As the
racket went on unabated some higher official came ove
r to placate me
offering the most stupid explanation for his colleague’s behavior: “It
is discretion’. Then I asked him why the discretion is only applicable
to ‘White people’ and he was lost for words and when he recovered he
stuttered.
“It happens every where’. That response obviously betrayed his
limited travel. The only concession black people get is not to jump the
queue but to be searched, questioned, queried and subjected to all kinds
of indignity at European airports. What Prof Ali Mazrui, calls “equal
opportunity for harassment’. We were comparing his ordeal reentering US
after a lecture tour in Trinidad and my not being allowed on BA flights
twice ‘for security reasons’. I teased him that I did not think that big
people like him could be treated that way. The ever-ready Mazrui
responded: “if you are a Muslim it is an equal opportunity for
harassment”.
I can only add that it is not just Muslims (even if the
y
are the current targets) because any African who travels through Europe
and America will know that opportunity too well.
What has my recent experience got to do with Marley’s mental slavery?
Quite a lot. It is that slave mentality that makes our people to treat
every white person as a superior being and be willing to grant all kinds
of concessions while maltreating their own peoples. It is that colonial
mentality that makes Europeans and Americans to act big when they are in
Africa without many of us showing our contempt and resentment for their
conduct. Those British people will not even jump a queue in the rain in
London yet they are willing to let it be done (even expect it) on their
behalf in Africa. Yet they will talk about the high level of corruption,
inefficiency, etc, in Africa without seeing their own complicity in
them.
These things happen because we let them. It is not enough to just
support someone wh
o dares to confront these situations, we all have to
resolve not to tolerate these indignities wherever we may encounter them
in all our lives. Our silences are not only submission but also
providing active encouragement for these insults to continue. Let it be
your New Year resolution to encourage ZERO TOLERANCE to indignities
against Africans at home and abroad.
Ends
Published on: Thursday, 8th January, 2004 |
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"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."- Malcom X
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