How Colonization Messed Up with The African Identity

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Let it be known that Africans have rich and admirable cultures that are as old as the earth. This is against the colonial mentality that has been there dismissing and demonizing African cultures. That’s not enough, the impacts of colonialism on everything African is immense with so much negativity. Before we dive deeper into this subject, I would like to bring to your attention, a dangerous argument, itself colonial in origin and intention. The argument is one that has been spearheaded by some individuals who claim that colonialism brought positive development along with it. That is not true at all. If you now ask what colonization should be like? The answer is that anything colonization has a bad intention and it doesn’t matter the good it brings along. We can learn more on this subject from the Moorish people who ruled over Europe in the period between 711 and 1492 AD. 


Moorish people in spain
Moorish people in Spain (Photo: Atlanta Black Star)

According to Prof. Ivan Van Sertima, the Moorish people brought civilization to the people of Europe in a human way. The Moors preserved European cultures, gave the people the freedom of speaking their languages. They ruled over a free people, educated the Europeans, and ensured that their sense of humanity was respected.  There is another group of those who would argue that European colonialism “helped” in civilizing Africans. That is a lie, for Africa was civilized before that. Some of our African societies were hybrid than those who sought out to colonize them. In other words, Africans civilized the world. Looking at the Moorish people, you will agree with me when I say that the western world learned most of all we call today civilization, from Africans. Knowledge of mathematics, architecture, medicine, governance, technology, and so much more was passed by the Moorish people to the Europeans when the Moorish ruled over Europe. 


The Impacts of Colonialism on African Cultures

In Africa and many black societies around the globe, it was hard for the colonizers to control our people when they were deeply rooted in their cultures. Africans had an organized system that dictated every aspect of their lives, be it political, spiritual, economical, and social. From a person’s birth, there were established traditions to name them, later on there was an initiation ceremony to usher someone into adulthood, a traditional wedding ceremony followed. Many other traditions were also marked in-between but lastly there was a traditional burial ceremony that marked the entry of someone into the spirit world. This shows that Africans were already organized, they were already civilized,  furthermore, they already had a leadership that they followed. Now, the coming of the Europeans marked a very dark and brutal chapter in African history. Another question arises here. 


Why did other races maintained their cultures while Africans abandoned theirs? This process of colonizing African cultures was extremely brutal and caused the deaths of millions of Africans. If you have ever watched the series “Roots” with the famous starring Kunta Kinte, you will see how Africans were flogged in public and forced to leave their African names and adopt European names. This evil system was keenly observed during the colonial times in Kenya as Prof. Ngugi Wa Thiongo mentions in his book “Decolonizing the Mind.” He states that African children in European schools were forced to abandon their languages and speak English which explains the existence of a generation of Africans today that cannot speak their native languages but are very fluent in English. The colonial education system also prioritized European knowledge over the African indigenous knowledge and problem-solving methods. This saw the ancient African wisdom being archived with the dangers of getting lost completely.  


Additionally, colonial administrations like in the Congo prioritized economic gains of their parent countries at the expense of the natives. In that regard, Africans were forcefully evicted from their indigenous homes which disrupted their social and cultural lives. In Kenya, the British colonial carried out a blasphemous act, one of bombing the Agiriama tribe’s place of worship, the Kaya Forest. In most cases the colonizers forced Africans into Christianity and demonized African spirituality. The Arab Muslims followed a more brutal path where those who refused to adopt Islam were killed. With those and many other barbaric acts of the colonialist, African cultures were significantly disrupted. Adding to the physical force used to subject African to cultural and artistic colonization, most Africans conceded defeat. An emerging issue today that tells us of the damage that colonialism had to our cultures and traditions is the presence of African arts in European museums. 


In the period of colonialism, the colonialists attacked rich African kingdoms and robbed them off their valuables, which they (colonialists) took to their parent countries. Those valuables ranged from items of political and spiritual identification to personal properties of African royals and the citizens. This is something all of us are aware of and it is this reason that Pan-Africans call for immediate reparations. The effect of such robbery by the colonialist is that they deprived African communities off their heritage and identities. It also affected the African practices that were associated with these tools, in most instances these practices would stop and ultimately there would be a challenge in passing respective arts and cultures to the succeeding generations. Instead, the colonialist pushed their western cultural practices down African throats. This has caused a lot of trouble and identity conflict on Africans. Those who chose to preserve their cultures and art had a rough time standing up for their natural right, maintaining what makes them Africans. With all that, it is evident that while the Europeans guised their mission in Africa as philanthropic, or one set to civilize the people, in real sense that was a dictatorial and genocidal mission. It oppressed more than it civilized Africans!


There are those who say that African history is a thing of the past and that we should look forward as a race. This is another dangerous argument and again a colonial one. With this argument, proponents seek to defend past colonialism and lay a red carpet for neocolonialism. As per the words of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, neocolonialism is more dangerous than colonialism for as colonialism sought to control our continent politically, neocolonialism seeks to control our continent economically and if you ask me, it is evident that neocolonialism seeks to control information including that of African history and culture. African history whether good or bad is unignorable, undeniable, and unerasable. No matter your intentions of dismissing it, African history is paramount to making informed decisions to change the future of the continent. To add on, the effects of colonialism are still felt today and thus we cannot ignore its history. The colonialist knows what that kind of information serves (it will inspire an awakening) and thus they do not want that to happen. A people who knows of how great they can become, cannot be put into servitude. 


The argument as to why we need to revisit the old ways for they are the ones that worked for us is later supported by the words of Chinua Achebe in his book “Things Fall Apart” where he says that the adoption of western cultures has put a knife at the center of our Africanity and our societies cannot come together and reason as on people. The disunity is so bad that today you will find a tribe that used to worship the same God (believing that they are children of the same first parents) attacking each other based on the different ideologies that they have adopted. A good tribe to note is that of my people, the Mijikenda who are a Bantu speaking group found at the Kenyan Coast. With others adopting Christianity while others adopting Islam, intermarriages between the sub-tribes have been made close to impossible. You should note that these were a group of people that used to live as neighbours, they traded together, and intermarriages were not that complicated as it is today. Today, they are living like water and oil. Here, we can confirm that the divide-and-rule strategy worked well for the colonialists and greatly affected the African societies. 


Depiction of Berlin Conference
Depiction of Berlin Conference (Photo Credits)

To bring this point home, the colonialists went further not to respect the existing African boundaries, and administrative units that existed. From the case of the Agiriama revolution of the 1800s, the people at the Kenyan Coast were resisting, among many other grievances, the imposition of colonial administrative systems that did not give regard to the existing African leadership.  This was a colonial system that was used by the British to rule most regions in Africa. Apart from respecting the local administrations, the Berlin Conference organized by the German leader, Oto Von Bismarck, from 1884 to 1885, did not respect the existing boundaries that Africans had agreed on and that which had maintained peace and respect among African societies. The Maasai and Somalis in East Africa are a live example of this today. The boundaries set to divide these communities did not consider their existing social life. The colonialists set boundaries that disrupted their cohesion. Ultimately, and with all those national travel restrictions, that has even made it more challenging for the tribes to unite. The colonialists put their selfish interests instead of respecting the African way of life.  


What has been of great concern for Pan-African thinkers is why the colonialist left African leaders out of the partitioning. We cannot say that in colonialism when the subject is represented it makes it good but the presence of African leaders in the table would have relieved Africans from the adverse effects of the conference that we see today. The conference and the administrative colonization can be blamed today for the political instabilities that can be witnessed in most African regions like the Somali and DRC areas. It has been witnessed in the Sudans where a bloody war erupted, leading to secession. The motivation of that kind of conflict was the fact that one group felt that it was not a part of the other one that it had been forced to live with. These two groups were not culturally alike and thus found it a challenge to work together. Also, as it can be seen today in areas that are affected by ethnic clashes, tribalism, and cultural crisis, those groups were grouped together without putting to mind their cultural, lingual, and historical diversity. 


Claiming our African Cultures

There is a way out from all this. As this essay advocates for the revisiting of African history so as to find the solution to present challenges and make a promising future, there lies the answer. Seeing the kind of life, we are living in, it is clear that the African man has lost in his way. To make matters worse, we have been brainwashed to the extent of seeing our African traditions as backward while European and Asian traditions as modernity, which is a lie! Our traditions as Africans are also modern. The former mentality is colonial just to distract us from who we were and who we ought to be. This system of identity colonization is also evident in our schools and governance today, after many years after we claimed independence and keep celebrating Independence Day yearly. Which independence is this that is not accompanied by cultural and artistical independence? If cultures are backward, why is the Chinese, Indian, Arab, and European cultures considered modern? On the other hand, Africans that have hold onto their cultures till date are often marginalized in most communities. 


Zulu Women in their traditional outfit (Photo Credits)
Zulu Women in their traditional outfit (Photo Credits)


With the rich African cultures and a wealth of African knowledge, it has been normal seeing those communities anguishing in poverty and with a limited access to resources necessary to protect and sustain their traditions for a longer time. These disparities suggest that our cultures just like in the colonial period have been undermined by the corrupt Western and Asian systems that we adopted after independence, and continue to uphold today. A renascence is needed in this matter and which should be led by our governments with the help of our able scholars in that field. Just like some of our forefathers that tried to Africanize their countries after independence, we need to do that. And if we are to be modern then let’s modernize in an African setting for surely even the Europeans and Asians have come a long way to the point that we admire their cultures. Why can’t we as Africans?


Those changes need to start with our education systems where African children will be taught the importance of their African history and traditions at a very early age. Schools should incorporate the learning of native languages in the syllabus. The problem of discouraging Africans from their cultures often starts in the schools. Prof Ngugi Wa Thiongo continues to say that the system of punishing students who speak their native languages in schools should be discouraged for it plants a negative perception to the child on its African identity. In my previous article “Crowns, culture, or hairstyles? The African hair-story” that was published in our February 2024 Issue, I outlined another concern in African schools where African children are discouraged from wearing their African Crowns. In this case, their African hair. 


This is another system that has been conditioning our people to hate their identities from an early age. It raises adult women that will be walking wearing fake hairs and men that will have low self-esteem in their own hair. Teaching our children at a young age to like and practice their African cultures, moreso to seek African solution to our problems, is more likely to bring more positive results and will strategically position Africa at an advantageous position in an era that every civilization is fighting to be a giant that will colonize the world. The African intention might not be to colonize the world but to be independent. This can be done through the philosophy mentioned above and that which has been turned into a song by Pan-African thinkers. We need to find solutions from home. Where is home? The home is Africa and all its richness in history, culture and knowledge. 


A case in example is how the world today has been faced by a major threat of global warming and other environmental threats. There has been a growing concern that we should now adopt traditional ways of farming to reduce chemical and carbon emissions. Here, our traditional ways of farming come in handy. If not so efficient that we can modernize them in an African way but not fully adopt foreign traditions. Generally, observing African traditions can be very helpful in addressing most of the challenges we face today. As we have seen, the solutions we have been seeking in the western perspective don’t work for us. 


We are Africans not only in history or colour or residence but also socially, economically, and politically. Therefore, we must go back to being African and the business of Africanicity. Apart from the technical example mentioned above, Africans can solve the issue of disunity, and transcend the legacy of colonialism and inferiority complex that has been affecting us to date. To summarize this, our current westernized system of governance, education, technology, religion, mention them all, is just offering a way for African leaders to solve European problems at the expense of African ones. Should we get into an agreement? That we are going to solve the cultural challenge by doing away with the colonial system and adopting Africanism. That which worked for our ancestors in antiquity when they built very powerful civilizations like the Mali, Kushitic and Kemetic civilizations that ruled the world. 


To read more:

Impact of colonialism in Africa.

The impacts of British imperialism in Africa.

Vedio: Dr. Ivan Van Sertima - The Moors

Book: Decolonizing the Mind by Prof. Ngugi Wa Thiongo

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