What is happening in Africa today, is what late Nigerian musician and social activist Fela Kuti described in his 1977 hit ‘Zombie’. In this controversial yet truthful narrative, Fela uses rhythmic beats to tell the story of a government regime that is blindly leading its soldiers to war. Does this scenario sound familiar? In another hit called ‘Teacher don’t teach me nonsense’ Fela blatantly attacks the education system for teaching things that no one can benefit from, and goes on to tear down the character of those in the education system of the government calling it a ‘DEMO-CRAZY’.
Now, why does that ring true to digital Africa today? In many ways Uncle Fela, as he was known by his fans, was singing prophetically when he saw a zombie of Africans being programmed by government to become zombies to a system that threatened to enslave them and keep them small in all spheres, including knowledge.
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Here are lyrics to Fela Kuti’s hit: Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense
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Breeding the ME, Myself and iPhone generation in digital Africa
It was Frederick Douglas who said ‘Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave’. Under the guise of democracy, a lot of African countries consider themselves to be free, but though the shackles have taken a different form, the same slavery still persists even today.
There is an agenda against the African people orchestrated by the West, to keep African people digitally deaf and dumb. By keeping certain aspects of information from Africans, the West can easily control what information Africans should receive and what they should not. The internet is a free channel that allows you to have control over what knowledge you expose yourself to and without control, Africa is at the mercy of the West.
The West will label the Queens and Kings of the motherland ‘primitive’ ‘dark’ and ‘uncivil’ and continue to portray us as a low-base species, while they feed us Empty-V (MTV), I-phones (The ‘I’ could mean ignorance for all we know), and Tablets when we are not sick. The West, in fact, has sick ideals and this brain rape they are conducting on Africans as a whole is sick. It is important to understand that Africa is a base continent, and the plight of every African represents the plight of every person in every Diaspora. While the West keeps us distracted with Beyonce’s booty shaking on Empty-V, they continue to mock Africans and poke fun at us not knowing enough:
See this clip of the adult animated cartoon by Trey Parker and Matt Stone named South Park here:
Notice a KFC there? Now tell me, why would the West find the fact that their own KFC has chemicals that are equivalent to marijuana or drugs? So much so that they put it in a cartoon as a form of entertainment? This, by the way, is a cartoon that People magazine named as one of the best television shows for 2009.
Secondly, notice the song that the character sings as he is walking to the mock KFC? He even says ‘Africa’ alluding to the idea that he is African and that Africans are the ones consuming this poison called KFC. How could we even know this information without access to it? Social activist, speaker and author of ‘Black Matters’, Zaza Ali said that there was a war against the black race.
The business of the Internet and the implications of an Internet enlightened Africa
Simply put, there is information that the West deliberately keeps from Africans in order to keep us under their watch. The internet will open channels and avenues for knowledge that the West fears. The idea is that if Africans get hold of certain knowledge they stand to mobilise others all over the world. If this is anything to go by, then what Charles Marden noted in his 1952 writings called ‘Minorities in America’ could be how the West has shaped the world to view minorities, including those in Africa. Marden says this when speaking of the black man: ‘He is much more sexy than the white man, and exercises no restraint in its expression” and “a likable fellow, clever in a childlike way, and has natural abilities as a singer, dancer, actor which surpass those of most white folks”.
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Click here for full article by Charles Marden
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I believe it is views like this that are at the base of every regime that separates the black race from her birthright – a deep fear.
If the West had any interest in imparting knowledge to Africans through the internet, they could have done it over a decade ago. But in a land of personal gain and self-interest, the West does not get involved in African affairs unless they have something to gain.
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Read the full BBC News: Internet use in Africa
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Notice that everything is concerning bottom lines, power lines and revenue and nowhere does it say anything about empowerment and upliftment. Why? The West doesn’t care about our knowledge. These are people who, according to a news24 article published on the 8th of March 2016, by Amanda Khoza, collaborated with the Kwa -Zulu Natal government who forked out R 3.7 million to promote rap artist Nicki Minaj and another rapper. It goes to show that the West is on a mission to govern what Africans deem to be important and that our municipal and governmental leaders are slowly being weaved into this agenda.
Still think that Africa is a leading priority for the West? There was a recent uproar when the FDA conducted their own research and finally, confirmed that the US imported chicken does, in fact, contain arsenic, a cancer-causing poison which they intentionally feed their chickens.
According to the article, the FDA and poultry industries have been denying for years that the feeding of arsenic to chickens has any effect on the meat until recently. It also reveals that the US has been feeding their chickens arsenic for the past 60 years. One would beg the question ‘What does chicken have to do with knowledge or the plight of Africans? The idea that things are not connected is what keeps us separated from the world around us. This ‘arsenic revelation’ has been available on the internet before it was published publicly. Doesn’t that make you question whether other industry news is being kept from you? The other question to consider is how it’s possible that this ‘arsenic-laced US chicken’ made it to retail store shelves in South Africa before it was discovered to be toxic.
Could it be that the agenda to keep Africans uninformed and ignorant is collaborative and that most African leaders are propagating the dumbing down of their own people?
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See full article here: Arsenic Chicken
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The evolution of the internet in Africa – Breeding an internet consciousness
The evolution of digital Africa is really a form of revolution against the West. The West has not succeeded in keeping Africans in a state of ‘zombie-hood’. These recent stats show that Internet is fast becoming a phenomenon that is linking Africa to the world. It is therefore very difficult to keep us a ‘dark continent’ when the rest of the world can see Africa for what it is – a bright light.
Though they continue to portray Africa as savage people, through the internet, we see the world emulate our food and imitate how God made us physically. The internet is blurring the lines between all Diasporas as well as the rest of the world. If the recent internet world stats are anything to go by, then there is definitely nothing ‘dark’ about the African continent, which shows Africa as having one of the strongest increases in mobile data usage. This report further predicts a 20-fold increase in the next decade, for mobile internet. The top 3 African countries with the highest internet use being Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya, with Tanzania having the lowest internet users.
The result of an Internet conscious Africa is a people that ask questions, and relevant questions, a people with individual opinion and awareness of who they are in the world. One of the top global hashtags, #JusticeforLiz was made global by Kenyans who questioned the society they lived in. This Internet-conscious group took on to social media to voice their petitions over their justice system, which ‘sentenced’ a group of six men to cutting grass after brutally raping a 16-year-old girl and leaving for dead. The Twitter response to this case went international, and soon the world stepped in to demand justice for the little girl, who had survived the ordeal and was now in a wheelchair. The result was a retrial and a just sentence for the perpetrators.
In the case of justice for Liz, Kenyans took to the Internet to mobilise themselves as a force to get justice of their own. Could this be one of the West’s biggest fear perhaps? That the Internet is powerful enough to mobilise Africans for influence?
In Tanzania, it was one tweet and the hashtag #WhatWouldMagufuliDo that led to a social media frenzy which saw Twitter followers engage and connect to share a laugh about their President’s extreme, yet peculiar money saving ways with tweets like this:
Through the internet, even phrases such as ‘to magufulify’ were coined.
Twitter followers all over the world rode on the bandwagon of the #WhatwouldMagufuliDo hashtag and made it global. In this regard. Kenya invited the whole world into their space, to share the common human need for laughter. With the rise of internet use in Africa, the West will not be able to succeed in keeping us ignorant of the world and truths around us. Through the Internet, Africa can reach the world and the world can reach it.
VIEWS EXPRESSED IN THIS BLOG POST BELONG TO THE GUEST BLOGGER AND DO NOT REFLECT VIEWS OF ENITIATE IN ANY WAY.
