The Game Of The Mind: How Colonialism Made Africans Hate Themselves And Worship The Stranger

He painted heaven white and made hell black. Heaven in the North (up), while hell in the South (down), which also refers to our differences in geographical location. He gave us a white God with blue eyes, a blond savior named Jesus, and patriarchs in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were all white in the imagination of a continent they never knew. He told us that salvation had a skin tone, that holiness had a race, and that divinity spoke only one language, which is his. They gave us a corrupt government system that allows voting manipulation, while even when transparency is applied in their voting casting system, the  decision of the majority in a society that houses majority ignorant people will subdue that of the minority critical thinking and non conformist individuals.

We were tricked to change our African names and adopt European names if we must baptize in their religion. Our ancestors, who worshipped the Creator through the drum, the dance, the wind, the river, and the sacred grove, were told they worshipped demons. Our priests and priestesses, who understood nature’s pulse and humanity’s balance, were branded as witches and sorcerers. This was not religion but psychological warfare. It was not civilization for it was erasure and its entirety.

Over time, we became ashamed of our gods, our medicine, our names, and even our skin. The undeniable truth, especially concerning our African queens, remains that, The Darker The Berry, The Sweeter The Juice. They tought us to hate our natural hairs, eye lashes and embrace artificial eye lashes and dead/cursed people’s hair. The European taught us to bleach our bodies as we had already bleached our souls. He made us laugh at the African way and glorify the European life, even when it made us sick, confused, poor, and dependent. So, putting it together, in a year, Africans spend over $80 billion on hair extensions/attachments, eyelashes, bleaching creams, makeup, and religious pilgrimages.

Note: It is our wasting of what we have at hand that creates the lack in our lives.

 : Every man’s problem is rooted in the way he thinks.

Today, a man in a white coat who treats only symptoms is called “Doctor,” while the African herbalist who heals from the root is scorned and mocked as a primitive. Yet, it is the herbalist who knows that malaria is not just a fever but an imbalance in the body’s natural harmony; it is he who knows that leaves, roots, and bark, when properly understood, can cure what a thousand tablets cannot. But because his method does not come with imported labels or Latin inscriptions, we hide from him in the open, even as we sneak to him in the night. Our minds are still colonized. Our hospitals are full of patients, yet our forests are full of cures.

The tragedy is not that we lost the war of guns, for it is that we lost the war of the mind. We accepted a foreign god while abandoning the wisdom that once made us whole. Colonialism’s greatest weapon was not the whip; it was the lie that everything African was evil and everything European was good. And so, we dance to foreign rhythms, enrich strangers by patronizing foreign cloths, dominated by foreign names, and look to foreign lands for validation and help that never comes, or, which do come as a Trojan horse, concealing Western interests while in appearance poses as aid. Yet, our moral and pro community culture and our healing roots in the forest thirst for remembrance.

It is time for Africa to heal herself, not by rejecting others, but by embracing her own. We must rediscover and refine our traditional medicine, not as a relic of the past, but as a science of the future. We must revere our ancestors not as idols, but as teachers who understood life’s mysteries before microscopes existed.

The liberation of Africa will not come from politics or time wasting prayers to foreign gods. It will come when the African believes again in himself, in his land, in his effort, in his ways. Until then, we will keep calling the stranger “saviour,” while the true cure grows silently in our backyard.

– Ambassador Ezewele Cyril Abionanojie is the author of the book ‘The Enemy Called Corruption’ an award winner of Best Columnist of the year 2020, Giant in Security Support, Statesmanship Integrity & Productivity Award Among others. He is the President of Peace Ambassador Global.