GUARDIAN
Monday, 10 January 2000
2000 hearts of flowers
By G. G. Darah
WITH explosions of fire and music our marvellous earth sprang back to life
on Saturday, January 1. Nocturnal scenes of cities and the countryside were
emblazoned with this ignatius laughter in technicolor costumes. For 24 hours
continuously, the infernos of life and joy spread their luminous wings
across the vast planet. Watching these eshctological flares of delight and
rebirth evoked images of the first bang of creation that brought everything
into being. Whatever, whoever started it all five or so billion years ago
must have felt fulfilled on that Saturday as the universe glowed with the
sparkle of achievements dreams of paradise regained. For, it is said in the
Genesis book of the Bible that when the Christian God completed the
engineering experiment of creation, he beamed with satisfaction at the
splendour he beheld.
Our Africa, too, was part of the jubilant throng that girdled the earth on
New Year day. Scenes of revelry and grandeur were mediated by those of tears
and blood. Mercifully, many of the guns of self-destruction maintained a
days silence in anticipation of the promise of a future without strife.
African warlords hardly have time to pause and ponder why the weapons they
deploy so devastatingly are all imparted from foreign lands. Only South
Africa has manufacturing capacity. Those who sell the weapons to us are as
guilty as us, just as the European and Arab slavers of the past will share
hell fire with our African ancestors who captured and sold. Death, lest we
forget, is the eldest and largest enterprise in our world. Everyone invests
in it, ultimately. The one that comes with natural transitions is
inevitable, but we can limit that caused by ambitious politicians and
merchants of fortune, that variety the Urhobo people refer to as Kpregede
death, (unnatural or accidental death). After the New Year recess, African
theatres of war may boom again and the manufacturers, wielders and vendors
of weaponry will laugh to their bank vaults or to power secured with the
barrel of the gun.
Our prayer this year is that these mercenaries of death will have a contrite
heart. Let them watch again the once-in-a-millennium ritual performed by our
own Nelson Mandela on Robben Island on that Saturday midnight. Like the
pontiff of resurrected life, Mandela lit a candle to proclaim humanity's
triumph over evil, over oppression and over racism. That act is the first
epiphany for Year 2000.
Let us rejoice, too, for overcoming the merchants of fear, those capitalist
opportunists who threatened that the Y2K plague would consume our
civilisation come January 1. That holocaust did not happen because the world
is too precious to be downed by the single bullet of makers and traders of
technological tools. Cajoled or bamboozled, humanity managed to arrive
compliant at 2000, armed with the charms and tricks acquired since the
beginning of time. For, as it has been ordained this world is our home and
we shall always own, master and manipulate it to serve the purpose of our
existence.
How community compliant were you on New Day? This is a question that has
long troubled humanity through the millennia. In this matter, Africa has
vital lessons to teach the world because we were the first humans to arrive
and possess the earth. Incontrovertible proofs of the African primacy are
already common knowledge: the first ancestors of the human race sprang from
the womb of evolution in the region situate between the Great Lakes of
Central Africa and East Africa. From there, our seeds multiplied and peopled
the earth, with skin pigmentation changing according to weather and
environmental conditions. We taught the world how to think, to dream, to
play, to invent and produce things (technology). We inaugurated all systems
of social organisation and political administration from the simple commune
to the most gruesome dictatorial order.
As Professor Cheik Anta Diop observed in his book: Civilization or
Barbarism, there is no ideology, philosophy, political system or technology
that Africa has not experienced before.
The intercourse between science (logos) and technical production (technos)
otherwise known as technology, was originated by black Africans of Egypt
over 7,000 years ago. This endeavour is referred to as civilisation. From
Africas Egypt, the knowledge and methods spread elsewhere, some through
imitation and copying, others through theft and violent plunder. This march
of civilisation went to the old Asia Minor (Persian, Babelonian, etc.),
China, India, Greece, Rome, and hence to Western Europe. The last 500 years
have been the age of Western European triumph of humanity's genius. North
America is part of that inheritance. The daring and vision of the European
migrants was significant in the transplant of the continental achievements
to the Americas. But that capitalist feat there would have been unattainable
without free, black labour supplied by millions of slaves.
If Africa did all this, why are we so blessed today with poverty, dependency
and failure? No one has all the answers. But those who seek some
enlightenment can wake up Chief M.K.O. Abiola from deadly sleep and command
him to repeat his familiar answer to the enigmatic quiz. He once asked
American critics of his Reparation project to imagine what would happen to
the Japanese technological miracle if, by some accident, all their computer
wizards, engineers and entrepreneurs were rounded up and evacuated from
their land. That is what the slave trade did to Africa in 300 years. But as
the Jews have proved, those who suffer holocausts can rise again, provided
they have the likes of Moses, Einstein, Karl Marx, Gurion and others who
dare to challenge history and compel it to yield desired answers.
So, what did Nigeria have to show on millennium cockcrow? Reports say N1.5
billion was expended on the celebrations and how it was dispensed is already
the topic of a probe rumour. But however the money was spent, the exercise
itself was not totally a waste. Take a deeper look at the various cultural
events paraded by the government to mark the epoch. But why was all of it no
form of culture of entertainment and revelry? That is where creation and
technical progress begins and continues. It is culture that humanity creates
to instigate the breakthroughs in thought and material production that go by
the name technology. If you are still in doubt, examine critically the cap
donned by Chief Dapo Sarumi, Minister of Communications and chief host of
the millennial celebrations, at the Abuja that week. It was the tell-tale
Yoruba dog-eared cap with the shape of a jet in flight. That simple,
tailor-made head gear embodies all the energy and imagination that should
transform our resources into thoughts, inventions, and tool-making which are
the hallmark of technological advancement.
The jet is the idiom of aeronautical engineering, flying and space conquest.
The image of a jet connotes mastery, overspeed and matter. Let the
government order our planners to study the structure and possibilities of
that folk cap and design from it the scientific formulae for marrying
science (thinking) with production (technology). The outcome of that
experiment evil herald the take-off of a truly made-in-Nigeria intervention
in the 21st century, because no country, no matter how benevolent, will
transfer its achievements to us. We can only rise or fall on the strength of
our good thinking and good products.
A thousand years are like a blink in Gods eye, so say the sages. Therefore,
2000 years are only two seconds in humanity's journey to eternity. If
millennial boundaries are to be measured by advances in technical progress,
the African millennial dating started 5000 years before Christ was born. The
lights are dim in Africa now, but it will not always be so because it had
never been so Africa Mayibuye(Africa will rise again). Those of us whose
lives have traversed two centuries deserve a toast. Let all the millennium
children born in the past 10 days join us to fasten our heart beats with
flowers of hope for a long flight across age and waste.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe/subscribe or view archives of postings, go to the Gambia-L
Web interface at: http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/gambia-l.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
