Youths, stop black ‘muntu mentality’; otherwise UPND should arrest you for not repaying loans – Part 1
By Austin Mbozi
I praise UPND: first, they listened to my article ‘Mr. President, Pay Faith Musonda’s K65 million to UNZA staff’ (The Mast, 12/11/2021). They paid it to UNZA youth tuitions. Second, they will release huge funds for youth empowerment.
Here are next proposals to UPND. First, do to youths what Ghanaian philosopher Kwasi Wiredu calls ‘mental decolonisation’. Tell youths that their parents/teachers lied to them that it is slavery/colonialism/neo-colonialism/politicians making them poor. What makes us poor is our black ‘muntu mentality’ of consuming more, working lazily and wanting free things. Second, give loans only to youths who had been BOSSES/OWNERS in their respective businesses for a minimum four years. Third, those four-year experienced youths must employ, say, one youth per each K15,000 loan they get. Fourth, district administrators’ offices must monthly inspect details of each funded project and reposes it if it shows signs of wasting loans. Fifth, a youth failing to repay at least 60 per cent of the loan must repay it by working in prison for us, the tax payers contributing those loans.
To help UPND, I hereby address youths on ‘mental decolonisation’. Zambian youths, stop the ‘muntu mentality’ that makes blacks everywhere they live including USA, the poorest race. Stop believing in the lie that your poverty is due to the slavery/colonialism/neoliberal capitalism from the likes of Walter Rodney’s 1974 book How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Even your fellow Zambian Azwell Banda is insinuating that rich people ‘hyenas’ feeding on the carcasses of suffering poor (The Mast 27/12/21). Azwell is writing from South Africa where he is enjoying the same capitalist/former apartheid wealth. Why did blacks not enslave/colonise/exploit the whites in the first place? Fact: blacks were already poorer during the white/black formal contacts in the 15th century. In 2005, philosopher Mathias Riise published a journal article, ‘How does the global order harm the poor?’ trying to support Azwell-type arguments. Yet, he admits that the wealth gap ratio between Europe and Africa was 3 to 1 in 1820. Why was Africa not richer? Fact: Because your ancestors could not get rich by gathering/ eating wild imbula fruits instead of producing. Europeans did not enslave your ancestors because they were black but because they were productively weaker. White ancient Greeks kept white slaves and later kept Indians at Natal. Arabs of King Pharaoh kept ‘white’ Israelites of Moses. A black freed slave wrote a biography, Equiano’s Travels (1967): His own Igbo tribesmen caught and sold him to fellow Africans, initially as a domestic slave. On October 25, 1897, British resident representative in Barotseland Major Robert T Coryndon announced to King Lewanika that the British government has banned slavery. The indunas refused to release my Tonga slave ancestors and nearly fought him.
Some blacks even credit slavery for being born in the great America rather than backward Africa. When Muhamad Ali visited Zaire (Congo DR) in 1974 to fight George Foreman he joked that, ‘’thank God my granddaddy got on that [slave carrying] boat!’’ Thus, at the World Conference against Racism in Durban in September 2001, Senegalise president Abdoulaye Wade rejected suggestions of Europeans compensating Africa, saying that even his own ancestors kept slaves.
Revise history, stop self-pity. Your unproductive ancestors enabled the evils of slavery. Yet, in an article ‘Colonialism and Economic Development’ published in 2012 , researchers Leander Helding and Robinson James found that colonialism actually increased life expectancy in Uganda and Zimbabwe from a mere average of 24 in 1942 to 32 in 1965. But you messed it. Zambia inherited from colonial masters a per capital GDP of over US $500. But this declined to $250 by 1991. Now governments feed you on nkongole.
Replace your ‘muntu mentality’. Get great ideas from Chika Onyeani’s book ‘Capitalist Nigger’. In 2001, addressing a black entrepreneurship conference at the Morgan State University, Maryland, USA he said: ‘’my topic today is about the Black Race…My discussion is about the truth; it is about honesty and frankness. It is about no more lies, no more hiding the truth, and no more blaming others for what is happening to the Black Race. It is about accepting responsibility for our actions; it is about playing the same games that others are playing and becoming successful. …The Black Race as now constituted, though as endowed as others, is a non-productive race. We have to accept the fact that the Black Race basically is a consumer race, depending on other communities for culture, language, our feeding and our clothing.’’
You think Onyeani is just yapping? Are you crazy? Onyeani was a successful businessman, beating whites within the USA. He is an Igbo, the most successful black ethnic group on earth. Don’t argue. You Zambians feared president Edgar Lungu, barking at him in dark corners in fear like puppies barking at an elephant with tails pulled behind their behind legs. But an Igbo, Seer 1, fought him out as ‘One commando’. Even that Chinua Achebe you learn in high school literature is Igbo. Jay Jay Okocha and Nwanko Kanu whose soccer dribbles you enjoy watching are an Igbo. Innocent Chukwuma who makes Innoson Motor vehicles is Igbo.
Your leaders like Kenneth Kaunda, Frederick Chiluba, Michael Sata or Edgar you accuse of causing your poverty come from your muntu mentality community as you. So, it is a ‘muntu mentality’ voting for a ‘muntu mentality’. Among productive peoples like Asian Tigers, even dictators grew economies, like Adolf Hitler did. Asian and white Zambians, living among these your leaders, are prospering. Their culture is productive, selling you expensive phones and jackets they don’t wear. No wonder non-Christian Chinese mock you that they can manufacture and sell Jesus to you.
Watch out for Part 2 on Thursday 24 March 2022
The deeper this author gets into his PhD, the more he realises that most African PhD holders are only increasing their consumption/pomposity, not productivity.
Email: austin.mbozi2017@gmail.com. Phone: +260 978 741920.