What's really necessary

http://lizettedeklerk.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/is-that-really-necessary/

Warning: the image on that page is very graphic, very real and very depressing.


I just find it very interesting that as soon as I get out of taking a final exam on Africism, with special focus on the heterochthonal (non-native) religions in Africa for 2 whole hours, that a friend on facebook posts this. It's one of those articles you see every once in a while about the apparent "atrocities" against people, mostly little children, carried out by indigenous African religions. This time the focus is on South Africa. For many many reasons, I have problems with stories like this as well as the ways in which they're reported and the ways on which they are commented.


First of all, the woman expressing such urgency on this situation (although how much of it she's working or willing to impact remains to be seen) is white. That automatically in my mind presupposes a lot and unfortunately, after reading her commentary I was not wrong. I left a comment on my facebook friend's post to this affect:

yet... i wonder how many babies were abandoned pre-colonization. i wonder how many incidents of this there were pre-colonization. white ppl always wanna fuss about what they need to do to help african people, but no mention is ever made of the current state of the peoples of africa being a direct result of colonization. they never want to say anything like, uproot all white colonizers and colonial rule. white ppl wanting to "help" africans is how they got like this. they never want to say anything about all the european and american businesses and factories, oil refineries and mines over there. the peoples in south africa in particular are not in a state of ruin because they're backward people with backward traditions, as statements like hers suggest.... they're a people under colonial rule. period. point blank. the whites are still the majority of wealth and ruling class there. soweto still looks now as it did by most accounts, during apartheid. c'mon now wit dat. 


My sentiment is simple. Although there are elements to Africism, its peoples, its traditions and rituals that we do not understand and may find absolutely revolting, AND there are some very old and unsavory elements such as female genital mutilation by some peoples, I make the case that it is very difficult, at this point to say what is truly indigenous and what has not been made an all new thing, yet called a tradition by ignorant white people, that may have stemmed from something indigenous but has now become something altogether different in light of the aftermath of the recent past. Granted, using abandoned babies for spare parts is horrific and shouldn't be done by anyone and upon revision, all peoples of the world can perhaps move into an understanding that such things should not happen. However, who are white people to ever judge? In terms of what to do with some children? Especially African children? Cut the patriarchal white man's burden crap out already. Africans don't need white people to "help" them do anything or be better at anything. They need white people to once and for all leave them the hell alone to clean up the mess they've left. They need their own resources in their own control. They need to somehow if at all possible, undo the political regimes that have been put in place by European rule or as a result of European colonial actions. I don't know if it's at all possible to have a "truth and reconciliation" of some sort that encompasses probably anywhere from 50 to 300+ years but I guess that's kind of what I'm getting at in terms of the peoples healing themselves, in that respect. If white folks can do anything, they can get their apartheid counterparts out of Africa completely. And they can take the likes of De beers, Johnson & Johnson, Firestone and Pfizer with them.


Africans do not need help as a backward people turning away from backwards ways, as that woman and many others have often suggested. I maintain that a people have the right to be indigenously what they are, although the ultimate problem is the inevitable impossibility of this being able to happen, due to the damage done by Europe, America (and to some extent Arab/Muslim) intrusion.