Western education is not a problem

Editor, RE: “The fight against the colonial mentality is not yet won” (The New Times, November 25). I’m afraid to say that Lonzen Rugira’s opinion is simply “beggars’ belief”; why are you guys defending the indefensible? As much as I do not demean our tradition and customary values, I, at the same time, think that we should appreciate the fruits this continent is still enjoying because of western education. Henry Settimba ************************** I cannot claim to speak on behalf of Mr Rugira, but as for me, I have no problem with western education in many fields, especially the hard scientific and even some social science disciplines. My issue is with the inculcation of subjective values and the often subtle encouragement of their own superiority. Many African writers and thinkers as well as others of African origin, such as Ngugi wa Thiongo in his 1986 work, Decolonizing the Mind, or Frantz Fanon in his seminal psychoanalytical masterpiece, Black Skin, White Mask, have skillfully examined how colonialism is internalized by the colonized, infusing them with a complex of inferiority. Fanon, in particular, and Ashis Nandy of India in his The Intimate Enemy, highlight how, through the mechanism of racism, oppressed people themselves end up emulating their oppressors. African history, like that of many other colonized and dehumanized peoples, is replete with proof of such transformation. I would recommend that if you haven’t you try and read all these thinkers and writers, as well as such others as the late Black Consciousness leader, Steven Bantu Biko, murdered in jail by his South African Apartheid tormentors. Mwene Kalinda ************************** Mr Settimba, traditional knowledge everywhere in the world has been on life test bench for centuries, compared to only a few years/decades test of some knowledge in western physical and human laboratories. What some of us advocate is not rejecting one for the other, as it has been inculcated to us by the colonialist propaganda, demeaning our traditional knowledge, with the only aim to advance theirs with the ensuing systematic physical and human exploitation that we suffered and are still suffering. We are just saying that a more balanced take is in order now: a methodic selection from anywhere in the world, compared to our own that we still have, of what is best for us to enhance our current life. Just, for instance, why not compare first the nutritive value for Rwandans, of the now imposed (American imported) flour maize “kaunga”, with the nutritive value of the Chinese rice noodles, of the Indian chapattis, of the Arab world couscous, of the Mexican and Central American tortillas…prior to banning in the Rwandan diet our traditional “umutsima” made of millet or sorghum. Caused by the colonial propaganda that imposed “white” (less nutritive) bread for the “évolués”, and for the populace, cassava and now maize “ugali”, what an impoverishment to our body! And to our individual and collective mind, both Rwandan and the world’s, that can no longer innovate new products and health enhancing services from those two indigenous cereals now vowed to extinction. Francois-Xavier Nziyonsenga

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Western education is not a problem