MODERN AFRICA

Ideas that are energies repeatedly reinforced by actions to calcify into rational beliefs. Beliefs repeatedly reinforced may become customary. Back of all custom, back of tyranny, back of hegemony is belief; behind which are ideas that are repeatedly reinforced by actions into custom. To be free: Attack the ideas in back of the offensive infrastructure, be they church, state, philosophy with ideas of your own that are as often reinforced repeatedly and you will achieve the deadlock that enables development of you and your work. Dr. Basil Davidson, whose fine book, MODERN AFRICA: A SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY (1994), inspired my insight , put it this way: "In those days, thinking about the future, educated Africans saw two big obstacles to any progress. One of these was raised, and always built higher, by the racism of the colonial systems. The Africans, this racism insisted, are inferior. They have made no history. They cannot rule themselves: we superior Europeans must do it for them. "These assertions were not truths but myths which buttressed colonial rule. Africans had made history, and built civilizations, and ruled themselves, through countless years before any colonial ruler came up on the scene. Yet these myths, however surprising they may seem today, were widely believed in those early decades of our century. That was partly because the colonial rulers were far advanced in machinery and modern technology, and they consequently claimed that they had 'invented everything.' Partly it was because children in colonial schools were taught the same racist lesson. Africa's own development was never mentioned or discussed." P.31, "Key Ideas for Progress"