Brussels- Europe's capital of shame

A video of an interview with President Ruto of Kenya, by Mo Ibrahim, is currently tending massively. It was among the most candid and revealing interviews of an African president to emerge in a long while.

President Ruto lent his massive voice to what most African commentators have pointed out: that most times our leaders in Africa behave stupidly and naively, especially when it comes to dealing with other regions of the world.

It is as though African leaders do not understand the meaning of the word 'Sovereignty.' A Sovereign is simply someone above whom there is no higher authority. A sovereign state is an internationally recognized country with the full power to manage its own political and socio-economic affairs - this includes determining its own cultural space and civilization.

Africa's post-independence leaders recognized this and they fought tooth and nail to assert their sovereignty. And the cosmopolitan powers, apart from the French, respected this. The late KB Asante once told me that it was unthinkable to imagine Kwame Nkrumah partying with an Ambassador - he will meet them only when credentials are been presented and accepted. He also could not imagine the president of Ghana routinely meeting with Ministers from foreign lands.

What went wrong?
Along the road, things fell apart for us so much so that the President of the Republic of Ghana did not see anything wrong in appearing at a Press Conference with the VICE-PRESIDENT (caps for emphasis) of the United States. And as though that were not egregious and insulting enough, the president of the republic was subjected to public ridicule by Western journalists who called on him to defend his country's stand on their stupid lgbwhatever. I cannot imagine Western journalists behaving so disrespectfully to President Paul Kagame.

Our Yoruba elders say that: Iri ti a ba ri ja la nna / Goods are priced the way they are presented.

Because Ghana lost its sheen and dignity and turned herself into an International Goveling Beggar, she is treated with the utmost disrespect. Because we remain idiotic enough to allow some people to come and take away our gold and other minerals in exchange for their fancifully printed ordinary paper (which is backed by absolutely NOTHING except pseudo economic gimmickries), they can treat us with contempt and disdain.

In his interview, President Ruto faulted his peers for rushing around the world to attend the summons from foreign leaders. He correctly pointed out the sheer stupidity of 54 or so African leaders leaving their countries and their continent and allowing themselves to be packed in buses to go and appear before the American, Russian, China, Indian, and Turkey leaders.

It will never be known why the sheer stupidity of this did not occur to our leaders in Africa, many of them are elderly, and we mostly associate wisdom with old age. Gladly, the president of Ghana told that the African Union has finally decided to end the stupid and nauseating charade. Henceforth, such meetings will be attended by the Chair of the AU and his Regional Commissioners.

I touched on this in my article, "Europe - Europe's capital of shame." reproduce it here:

"Imagine it if you can: the European Union invites the leader of the State of Israel, and schedule the meeting in a city adorned with statues of Adolf Hitler. The Israeli leader attended the meeting, wine and dine with his hosts, and allowed himself to be driven around the city in stretch limousines, from where he could gaze at the numerous statues of the Man who killed six million Jews.

If your mind reel at the incredulity, you are not alone.

Whatever one says about them, Israelis have enough self-respect not to allow themselves to be grossly insulted.

Not so, the people that rule in Africa.
From April 3 to 4 2014, African leaders summoned to a meeting by the EU went and attended the meeting at Europe's capital of shame, Brussels.

For reasons best known to them, Europeans choose the capital of Belgium as their headquarters. That is their business.

It, however, becomes African business when we see Eurocrats invite our leaders to meet at Brussels, a city that bristles with portraits and statues of King Leopold II, the monster directly responsible for the death of ten million Africans in the Congo. Their crimes: unable to speedily produce enough of the wealth that Belgium flaunts to the world.

"I felt the same on a recent trip to Brussels, which in many ways is the political capital of Europe. Grandiose statues of King Leopold 11 adorn Belgium of a man who turned his African "Congo Free State" into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps 10 million innocent Africans, and sewed the seeds of a troubled country for generations to come.

"Of all Europe's colonial histories, the slaughter in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo was unique in its aims. While the exploitation of much of Africa, Asia, and Latin America happened under a flimsy guise of state-sponsored enlightenment, the Congo was Leopold's personal property. From 1885 to 1908, he ran it as a factory staffed with disposable workers whose only purpose was to produce more ivory and rubber to fund his ever-grander palaces, statues, and monuments." – http://world.time.com/2013/09/18/skeletons-in-king-leopolds-closet-colonial-era-belgian-museum-grapples-with-bloody-past/

It shows not only utter heartlessness and abject absence of historical and racial sensitivities/sensibilities, but it is also gross disrespect to Africans that all of EU protocol did not see anything wrong, in asking our leaders to attend a meeting where they cannot but see the statues of the man that killed so many of us!

If the Belgians/Europeans do not know better, our leaders, if only they have studied their history, ought not to be so bereft of their historical responsibilities not to have insisted on a change of venue.

Sadly, African leaders were, as usual, ill-equipped to deal with the exigencies of the time.

Very sadly, the mental capacities of most of our current crop of leaders leave much to be desired.

Among the most incongruous things I found during my sojourn in Europe, apart from the rampant and illogical, almost pathological racism, is the absence of any knowledge of non-European history by Europeans.

During my secondary school days in Nigeria, we made it our business to study history, especially world history. In contrast, little is taught to people in Europe that did not celebrate Europe.

Another baffling thing is the pomp and ceremony Europeans accord calamities that befell them, while they totally neglect the vast (God knows that they are truly vast] tragedies Europe has visited upon the non-White World.

A good example is the Netherlands where on the 5th of May every year, the Monarch will be joined by officials to celebrate their Liberation Day. The Nazis conquered and occupied the country for about five years, and that was enough reason for the Dutch to make a major production of it annually. The Dutch, however, did not set a date aside to commemorate the victims of their centuries of despoliation around the world. While every Dutch child is taught about the Nazi occupation and atrocities, they are never told about the Dutch truly bestial atrocities in South Africa, Indonesia, and in Surinam – including the roasting alive of slaves.

Apart from the insulting setting, methinks that the time has come for African leaders to stop ridiculing us as perpetual beggars.

It galls these days to still read about Europe trying to aid Africa like we are some cripples.

It is time we stop pretending that Europe ever aided or is now aiding Africa.

It is time African leaders stop their abject groveling, and stop allowing people that should come to us as supplicants to walk over us like some important potentates.

It might make Europeans happy to go around the world celebrating themselves, and wrapping their selfish and greedy pursuits of their interests in humanitarian halo, but we certainly have no business to turn ourselves into their Cheerleaders.

African leaders should come out and tell us what help exactly we have received from Europe for the past six hundred years apart from slavery, colonialism, and neo-colonialism that they today packaged as Globalisation, that should make us continue to look up to Europe for succor.

There is a saying that physicians should, first of all, heal themselves. Our elders say that if someone promises to buy you a dress, you should first look at what he is wearing.

When we look at Europe today, do we see people that can help anyone?

With what exactly can Europe aid Africa?
The truth is that Europe needs Africa more than we will ever need them. Unlike resource-deprived Europe, Africa has enough to be self-sufficient. If only our rulers will get serious.

France will grind to a halt without Niger's uranium which powers half of her electricity need – http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/61420

If only people will study their history.
It happens when people are so brainwashed (actually brain-dirtied) to the point where looking things up for basic research becomes an encumbrance.

The truth is that Europeans (whatever they call themselves) remain the greatest plague in human history.

Compared with the savagery exhibited by Europeans in Africa, Asia, and the Americas, Mao Zedong and Josef Stalin were SAINTS!

Let us not even begin to explore the atrocities of the Germans (a class act on their own) who built industrial-scale extermination camps!

The absence of shame plus the lack of historical and self-awareness is what makes it so difficult to listen to or take seriously any European mouthing nonsense about human rights.

Of course, we do not wish to live in the past and are prepared to forgive and forget and all that, but the sight of some stupid Europeans who gallivant around the world to deafen our ears with their sermons nauseates us greatly.

Readers can read the inanities contained in the resolution of the EU-AU meeting here: http://www.european-council.europa.eu/eu-africa-summit-2014

The link to the original article: http://alaye.biz/brussels-europes-capital-of-shame/

His latest book, Africa: a Continent on Bended Knees:

is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Africa-Continent-Bended-Femi-Akomolafe-ebook/dp/B08FGZNJ5T

On Booknook.store: https://booknook.store/product/africa-a-continent-on-bended-knees/

On Ghana Association of Writers Website: https://www.gaw.org.gh/product/africa-a-continent-on-bended-knees/