[Comment]Africa’s Elite And The Western Media

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[DeepThought]

Could it be possible to examine why African leaders have no respect for their own people

@Author
It has been examined. And there are many reasons for this.

First you have to know that in general, African and not just African leaders have no respect for themselves, their tradition or culture as a result of an unconscious/conscious , systematic internalization of the external. This lack of respect starts even with the namings of ourselves, things in our environment and then goes on to affect every other thing.

I'm assuming you're a Christian, so I will talk to you in the terms that you will at least hopefully understand if not agree with.

Genesis 2:19-20 (New International Version):

19 Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.

Is it that God was so unimaginative that he couldn't think of a name for animals?
Now, why do we think the God took those actions and what is the significance

The answer is that the names we bear, the names we answer to and who gives us those names matter. When we name something or someone and we make that name stick, and the thing or someone answers to that name, we demonstrate and exercise dominion over that thing or someone, whether he or she knows it or not.

Corollary to the foregoing is the rejection of any naming by the superior or perceived superior from the inferior. Thus it is impossible or unheard of for say the Americans as an example to answer to a name, (ANY NAME- no matter how innocent or good intentioned is going to be offhandedly rejected as presumptious comming from an African (uppity bush ni-gger)) given to them by say the African. This is one of the reasons for the rejection of the "Akhata" term being discussed in *Link - this thread*

Perhaps all it takes is a change of heart that begins with a radical rejection of the thought that the West is only interested in grubbing in the African compost

Irrelevant.You overstate the importance of the West. The truth of the matter is that what you ask is not just a problem with the leadership , nor with the West. It is an internal problem with ourselves but because in general, we (Africans) now see ourselves in the inferior mode as we have been seen by others and answer to names that were originally not ours. We have now reached a point where a better mode of behaviour is almost imposssible.

The change of heart you require is thus that we recognize where, how and when the cultural and spiritual damage was done and how to put a stop to it by consciously first rejecting that which is not ours. And I don't mean just names. I mean that all the nonsense of belonging to institutions which we did not name or found, organizations which are not ours e.t.c must be stopped.

Secondly we will need to design our own systems, our own organizations, based upon an independent and Afrocentric understanding of how the world works. Not how we have been told the world works.