I didn’t learn African history in school. What I know of my own history is what has been handed down from father to son (or in this case daughter) for generations. In Shona we say Ziva kwawakabva, kwaunoenda husiku (know where you came from, for where you go is dark). Very few of us know our histories before colonialism, and have a passing knowledge of the country’s history as a whole. What we do know is a history that is tainted, it is our story as seen by foreigners. It wasn’t that long ago that to be black was to be inferior, and we believed it. We didn’t know how to prove anything different.

The world has changed, but that lesson of a lack of history has become part of the very nature of being African. Africa as a continent looks Westwards and Eastwards and never to herself for solutions to her problems. Africans are supposedly the most educated and skilled immigrant group in America and Europe, yet Africa itself is the poorest and most under developed continent on the planet. How? Because even in education we teach ourselves the inferiority of our ideas. It is no wonder then that Africa’s collective present, and future, looks dark.

This entry was posted on July 28th, 2009 at 9:30 am by Upenyu Makoni-Muchemwa and is filed under Reflections, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.