Bastardisation of African Traditional and Moral Values: The Bane of Its Underdevelopment

The colonial masters were delighted in destroying African educational systems, comfortably diluting our religious beliefs, and succeeding in making Africans feel inferior. They took absolute control over everything and made Africans slaves on their own land.

Sadly, Africans were eventually turned into chattels, with the tacit support of some chiefs and greedy opinion leaders.

To the surprise and chagrin of the colonial masters, a son of Ghana, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, stunned them with his independence proclamation that “the independence of Ghana is meaningless unless it is linked up to the total liberation of Africa.” This was a call for unity. His declaration that “the Black man is capable of managing his own affairs” was a statement of competence and self-confidence.

Both statements threatened the colonial masters' authority and control over Africa. The rate at which countries under colonial rule were granted independence created dislike and hatred for Dr. Kwame Nkrumah and his compatriots.

Unfortunately, brute force was deployed to eliminate some of the vanguards of the independence movement. Presidents Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Tafawa Balewa of Nigeria, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, and many other African leaders were brutally removed through coups d'état, with the tacit collaboration of internal collaborators.

The cruelty visited upon some of the founding fathers of the independent African states instilled absolute fear in successive African leaders and that emboldened the neo-colonialists, who came in a different form.

The earliest colonialists came as traders, later became slave raiders, and finally colonised Africans through brutal force.

The neo-colonialists knew that using force to recolonise Africa would not be possible because of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah's proclamation of a united Africa. The only way to dominate and control the continent was therefore to introduce a charismatic movement that attacked both orthodox religion and African traditional religion.

Their target congregation was the African youth, who were attracted by their prosperity doctrines. They attacked orthodox churches for not being spiritually vibrant or “hot” enough to transform their lives materially. The charismatic movement therefore presented itself as the means through which people could become “the head and not the tail.”

These doctrines persuaded many young people to drift towards the charismatic churches, and many of the established churches consequently lost members. The wave of the charismatic movement became so strong that some traditional churches began mimicking its doctrines and methods.

After the charismatic movement gained a firm foothold, some of its followers were encouraged to regard ancestral worship and African traditional religious practices as evil. Many young Africans became ambassadors of this narrative, desecrating and rejecting aspects of their own traditional religion without fully understanding its historical and cultural significance.

That period marked the beginning of the bastardisation of our original values as Africans. Ghana was not spared.

From that period, our economic development began to stagnate. We have become excessively greedy, self-centred, corrupt, dishonest, divisive and lawless because we are all struggling to become “the head and not the tail.”

We are stuck because most of us are effectively tailless, and therefore do not have the tail to propel us forward.

Consequently, the neo-colonialists have maintained a firm grip on us and are not prepared to relinquish control without a fight.

They have ensured that we remain divided by exploiting tribal and religious conflicts, civil wars, coups and other forms of civil strife, all of which derail our developmental progress and enable them to dictate the pace of our development in perpetuity.

The question is: When will Africa wake up, rediscover its identity, reclaim its values, unite its people and take full responsibility for its own destiny?

Mike Kalley
Sociopolitical Analyst.