© Numero Unoma
Who would have thought that in the 21st Century, freedom would still be that ethereal and seemingly ever elusive ideal. Or is it a quality? Or perhaps even a figment of intellectual imagination, which I guess would mean it is a concept. Whatever it might be, it seems to be in short supply these days. If Covid19 did not prove to us just how fragile our liberty is, what with mandatory masks, quarantine and vaccination politics, then I don’t know what could help us wake up and smell the coffee.
In an Igbo proverb we say that ‘when you wake up, that is your morning’. There was a time when it seemed Africa had had her morning. I was not yet born in 1960, the year that was dubbed the Year of Africa . “The phrase was first put into practice by Harold Macmillan, then UK Prime Minister, during his “Wind of Change” speech. After touring British colonies in Africa, Macmillan had become increasingly convinced that “national consciousness” among Africans “was a political fact.” ”
Anybody who remembers their parents’ or grandparents’ “Congo Music” collection will know Joseph Kabasele Tshamala’s beautifully optimistic and joyful tune that swept across the continent, titled ‘Independence Tchatcha’. The amazing guitar work and those vocals with which the Congolese serenaded the entire continent through a wave of independence celebrations captured the spirit of Africa awakening. I heard a really good recent rendition which I just have to share here, sorry. (if you are reading the print version, please go online to get all the hyperlinks)
But even before that, our natural drive to be free as black people, was historically encapsulated in numerous slave rebellions. Respect! to the Santo Domingo Slave Revolt of 1521, which is recorded as the first ever slave revolt and occurred on the sugar plantation of Diego, son of that infamous “damn blasted liar”, Christopher Columbus.
What do slave rebellions have to do with us, I hear my African sisters and brothers ask? The answer is a whole lot. If nothing else, they have to do with spirit. They have to do with will. And they have to do with conviction. And with consciousness and decisive action. They have to do with sacrifice for the greater cause. They have to do with pride, and dignity and most of all, they have to do with freedom.
So having freed ourselves of slavery and colonisation, what seems to be the problem these days? It’s complicated. Does one begin with with a sit-rep of our present-day African predicament or should we zoom out and look at the world at large in looking for answers?
The prominent economics professor Howard Nicholas gave a speech 8 years ago, in which he openly acknowledged that educational institutions are “complicit in this whole enterprise” as the “producers of ideology” and that “the job of many western academics is to convince Africans they have to keep doing what they are doing and to show them it’s your fault that you’re poor, not ours” He speaks of how in our role as a raw material producer, Africa is fundamental to the global prosperity of advanced countries, a status quo that must be maintained at all costs. “We will not allow sub-Saharan Africa to escape that”.
It was Maximilien de Robespierre of the French revolutionary Jacobin movement who said “the secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
But it is not just through education that our minds are warped into acquiescing with the agenda of the west, it is also through popular culture and consumerism, and the most basic and quintessential tool of control is psychology, in which I just happen to have a degree.
Now this is where I zoom out to examine the issues surrounding liberty and freedom from a global perspective, so as to see how these impact Africa. One thing is clear, ignorant masses are dangerous. They can also be useful if you have an agenda that can harness their ignorance to its own end.
I pride myself in not being a herd animal. I am not into groups, whether chatting on Whatsapp or joining associations and the like in real life. I am an individualist, ever the nonconformist, borderline-eccentric free spirit, and have a natural inner resistance to trends. I am also impossible to hypnotise, at least so far nobody who has tried has succeeded. This could explain my fascination for crowd psychology, aka mob psychology, which functions by the trance-like intoxication that drives mob behaviour.
The 19th/20th Century French polymath, Gustave Le Bon identified that the anonymity experienced in a crowd leads to a loss of the feeling of individual self, with which also comes a diminished sense of personal responsibility. There is a propensity for individuals who have submerged in a crowd to be infected by the contagion of the predominant ideas and emotions of the mob, at which stage the shared unconscious can be influenced by any passing idea, and easily balloons into an ungovernable ideology. Donald Trump is a recent example of one who understood the power of mobsourcing. Read about it here.
One disciple of Le Bon who was also nephew to none other than Sigmund Freud, father of psychoanalysis, Edward Louis Bernays himself later became known as the the father of public relations. He believed the masses to be irrational, and agreed that they are subject to herd instinct. One of history’s pioneer influencers, Bernays understood how to direct herd mentality so as to facilitate the ulterior motive of making the masses buy into his clients’ products and ideas. Almost a hundred years ago, his New York Easter Parade pièce de résistance “Torches of Freedom” successfully shattered the taboo around women smoking, in one fell swoop.
Much of modern day advertising has its roots in Bernays’ methods, and the very worst of it can be seen in the power that social media has today, to subliminally mobilise swathes of humanity to act in ways desired by those behind it. Beyond influencing our behaviour as consumers, it now even renders us marionettes in the hands of the political puppet-masters of the world.
The 20th Century paid the dividends of the human encounter and engagement with freedom in the struggles of the women’s rights and civil rights movements, as well as other special interest groups like LGBTQX and Aboriginal activism, to mention but a few, so why are we still trapped?
Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” was largely about the dynamics of victimisation, but importantly and significantly, it was about overcoming victimhood. As an African woman of a certain age, I know a lot about the intersections of victimhood. Racism, sexism and ageism are still very much alive and kicking ass in my world, and yet like Angelou, I refuse to be trapped in victimhood. I have refined the concept for myself. Born free, now I’m expensive.
For all the sacrifices we humans have made for liberation and freedom, today we find ourselves imprisoned by an entire labyrinth of cages, some of which entail actual incarceration in the event that one does not conform to rules and regulations.
Cages which we must question, reject and endeavour to dismantle include debt, body dysmorphia and political correctness.
Debt is not as straightforward as we think it is. Did you know that credit card companies don’t like clients who pay off their debt? And we ‘Third World’ people are always fuming about IMF debt, but do you know how that debt could make its way into your personal investment portfolio through a ponzi-esque Wall Street scheme via climate change?
And before you succumb to unreasonable aesthetic expectations, please note that body dysmorphia is being used as a capitalist tool, with “the global cosmetic surgery and procedure market size valued at USD 63.4 billion in 2021, and projected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate of 9.6% from 2022 to 2030”, according to a market analysis report.
How about cancel culture, which is in fact an infringement on free speech, and therefore a sociopolitical as well as socio-economic instrument of control that invokes the herd instinct, thereby shutting down the disciplined process of critical thinking.
Political correctness, aka PC is to my mind, the apex of hypocrisy, and another sneaky method of censorship. For example I believe that there can and must exist an intellectual space in which Jewish people can be commented on or even criticised for that matter, without it immediately and indiscriminately being branded anti-semitic, and duly cancelled.
If you want to understand what seems to be the hardest cage of all to break out of, and one which is invisible too, then watch the documentary ‘Social Dilemma”, in which the founders of every social media platform you use today admit to not allowing their own children to use them, and why.
Now that we are free to have plastic surgery and show it off on instagram, what interpretation of freedom are we setting up for the future?
Please feel ‘free’ to comment below.