Africans need a sea-change in mentality

Editor, RE: “No nation has monopoly on moral superiority – Kagame” (The New Times, September 30). Those who ceaselessly preach human rights and democracy but insist they themselves must be above the rules they want to apply to everybody else will not have appreciated such straight talk. The biggest problem though is that there are many – even amongst our ranks – that have drunk very deeply on the notion that the unequal status quo in international relations is natural and should be maintained. The psychological ravages of centuries of being taught about the “white man’s” civilizing mission of the darker skinned people, of accepting the view of their own inferiority and therefore the rightness of the unequal international structure of relations are hard to undo. The incredible belief by some Africans in “nos ancêstres les Gaulois” or that this or that white man discovered Lake Victoria or the source of the Nile are very hard to uproot. And until we do and understand what canards all these are, we shall not break from the mental shackles which make us continue to accept the inferior pecking order we have been allotted in international relations—which is why Africa needs more leaders like President Paul Kagame to tell the world (and ourselves) that this inequality will no longer be accepted. Mwene Kalinda

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Africans need a sea-change in mentality