SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 26, 2010
My Prayer To Western Governments
by Wanelisa Albert
'This prayer, to you Western Governments
Comes as a response to the many appeals to develop Africa
Before we can get down to the dirty business of ‘enlightenment’ from our primitive native state
Can we, just as you have done, enslave some of your population to work on our cocoa plants?
Can we, just as you have done, use your people as commodity to be bargained as lowly as animals?
Can we rely on your cheap (huge understatement) labour to build our economies?
Can we ‘discover’ your lands as if there were no people and cultures that thrived before the arrival of our arrogance?
Can we then wipe out some of your ethnicities and put what is left of a people into reserves?
Can we then import our cultures and civilization and enforce it upon your people under the pretence of Modernisation?
Can we then write endless academic journals about how our dark skin proves us to more human and better able to reason?
Can we rewrite your histories according to our bias and feed younger generations’ bullshit about how barbaric people like Lincoln and Winston were?
Or better yet, only start telling your history upon our ‘heroic’ arrival?
Can we import, just as you did, dead naked women into our galleries and marvel at the ‘deformity’ of their flat bottoms, light skin and silky hair?
And upon our ‘discovering’ of your home, could it be possible to send our worst criminals to inhabit the land?
Would it be too much to ask if we could make Zulu and Swahili the two main international languages spoken by the rest of the world?
Then all your future generations would study University education using them and occasionally be accused of academic incompetence.
Can we set a conference in Lagos and construct countries that don’t exist and cut and paste new borders?
Force French, Germans, Spanish, Italians and Austrians to see themselves as a nation, and when they conflict contribute it to the nature of their savagery?
Furthermore, can we then exploit all your mineral resources and armies to fight in a world war that is against victimisation of a people when we are doing the same in your countries?
Enact infrastructure that’s only conducive to export your materials to our countries and not for the improvement of your people?
So that when you force us to leave, destroy the infrastructure so that you are ‘underdeveloped’ like the French did in Madagascar?
What I’m trying to say is
Basically fuck you over and then borrow you money to fix our mess....or at least the mess we started
Import Gods that are coincidentally the same colour as our skin and favour mostly our African way of life?
Leaving out huge chunks about equality and love for only our people, tell you that our God destined you to be our subjects but for you not to worry as things get better when you die.
Enact statues of our racist mother *uckers all over your cities and name universities after them so that the brutality of their legacies are engraved in the hearts of generations to come.....
So what do you think?'
Comes as a response to the many appeals to develop Africa
Before we can get down to the dirty business of ‘enlightenment’ from our primitive native state
Can we, just as you have done, enslave some of your population to work on our cocoa plants?
Can we, just as you have done, use your people as commodity to be bargained as lowly as animals?
Can we rely on your cheap (huge understatement) labour to build our economies?
Can we ‘discover’ your lands as if there were no people and cultures that thrived before the arrival of our arrogance?
Can we then wipe out some of your ethnicities and put what is left of a people into reserves?
Can we then import our cultures and civilization and enforce it upon your people under the pretence of Modernisation?
Can we then write endless academic journals about how our dark skin proves us to more human and better able to reason?
Can we rewrite your histories according to our bias and feed younger generations’ bullshit about how barbaric people like Lincoln and Winston were?
Or better yet, only start telling your history upon our ‘heroic’ arrival?
Can we import, just as you did, dead naked women into our galleries and marvel at the ‘deformity’ of their flat bottoms, light skin and silky hair?
And upon our ‘discovering’ of your home, could it be possible to send our worst criminals to inhabit the land?
Would it be too much to ask if we could make Zulu and Swahili the two main international languages spoken by the rest of the world?
Then all your future generations would study University education using them and occasionally be accused of academic incompetence.
Can we set a conference in Lagos and construct countries that don’t exist and cut and paste new borders?
Force French, Germans, Spanish, Italians and Austrians to see themselves as a nation, and when they conflict contribute it to the nature of their savagery?
Furthermore, can we then exploit all your mineral resources and armies to fight in a world war that is against victimisation of a people when we are doing the same in your countries?
Enact infrastructure that’s only conducive to export your materials to our countries and not for the improvement of your people?
So that when you force us to leave, destroy the infrastructure so that you are ‘underdeveloped’ like the French did in Madagascar?
What I’m trying to say is
Basically fuck you over and then borrow you money to fix our mess....or at least the mess we started
Import Gods that are coincidentally the same colour as our skin and favour mostly our African way of life?
Leaving out huge chunks about equality and love for only our people, tell you that our God destined you to be our subjects but for you not to worry as things get better when you die.
Enact statues of our racist mother *uckers all over your cities and name universities after them so that the brutality of their legacies are engraved in the hearts of generations to come.....
So what do you think?'
Piece posted with the author's permission. What was it that Steve Biko said again? 'It becomes more necessary to see the truth as it is if you realise that the only vehicle for change are these people who have lost their personality'. Wanelisa Albert is a South African poet par excellence, first met her in Zambia in 2007. Yes. Yes yes yes. I know. Yes. This one deserves a framed space on that 18 acre site on the East side of Manhattan. You know, the site they call the Headquarters of the United Nations of the World.