The Dishonourable Africans - Part I
By: Sam Abbd Israel

March 29, 2003

“There is no harder misfortune in all human history than when the powerful of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and awry and monstrous. And when they are even the last men and more beast than man, then the value of rabble rises higher and higher and at last the rabble-virtue says: Behold, I alone am virtue.”

Covering Note
Dear African Brother/Sister

Millennium Reflections II
I hope you have seen the general introduction on millennium reflection on Africa listed as Slumbering Africans Wake Up and the publication titled, The Hypocrites. As mentioned in the covering letter to The Hypocrites, these reviews are devoted to the analysis of the problems and issues facing Africa as we begin a new millennium. The focus of the current edition is on the political dimension in the context of leadership problems in Africa.

We have to mention at this stage that these publications are not ordinary intellectual materials that aim to promote any self-interest based on vanity. The materials contain deep revelations intended to help seekers unravel the spiritual insights of the problems facing Africa. We do not address the publications to everybody; they are for only those elected by heaven to lead Africa at this time in history. The contents are powerfully strong in language and intentions. They shall definitely disturb many of the fanatics of all shades and colours. Although, we recognise that a host of religious, economic and political fanatics are sincere in their faith it seems they are foolishly stuck in the mud of time.

In case you are one of those who do not believe that, our world is sick and in need of a divine healing, please pass over the essay. It is not for you. However, if you are one of those Africans troubled and worried sick about the decadence in/of our world and are sincerely seeking an understanding of the reasons why our world is in the mess it is, then please welcome on board.

This writer was in a similar state of mind and this was how he got prodded into the habit of a seeker. The materials in the millennium reflections are the summary of personal devotion to the search for truth and the contents you will be reading in these series are the spirit of truth-led discoveries.

The habit of a writer is similar to that of a traveller who decides to undertake a journey to the unknown far end of the earth. A traveller like a writer going on a new journey of adventure only has a general vague idea about where he wants to go. At the start of a journey or of writing, the traveller or the writer is not quite sure how he/she will get to his/her destination. More importantly, the traveller or the writer cannot be very sure of the many surprises that await him/her on the journey.

Travelling like writing is simply a leap of faith into the unknown. The materials under this edition are full of wonderful surprises. This writer has found them very enriching and very promising as a tonic for spiritual healing. They are designed to help each seeker of the truth of life towards finding the truth and allowing the truth to set each of us free from the shackles of ignorance and fear.

I hope this material will perform the same miracle of rebirth in your life as it did for me. I hope it will set you free from every inconceivable fear, ignorance, foolishness and stupidity as it has done for me. I hope it will give you a new brand heart of love and a spirit of truth to proceed on your personal journey of life towards your own goal of perfection as it is doing for me. These, briefly, are the purposes of this spirit of truth-led writing project. I believe it is a project designed by heaven purposely for the awakened and the true leaders of our continent. The task ahead of the true leaders of Africa is mammoth but it is an easy task because the hosts of heaven are backing the awakened Africans to take Africa by storm at the appointed time.

In case you are not part of the groups elected by heaven for the important project of spiritual healing of Africans and of the social revolution in Africa, please be warned, this publication is dangerous to your current beliefs and present life styles. In the interest of your own psychological health, please allow this material to pass you by if you are in doubt. Do not be bothered since each of us has his/her own calling in the journey of life. None of us can jump the queue or bribe our way through when it comes to things that pertain to heavenly and spiritual matters.

To all those who have been eagerly looking forward to the good news of bringing heaven to planet earth, please jump on board. The paradise project has started. However, for all those who are looking forward to going to heaven, please keep the candle burning your wish shall definitely come true if it is in the plan of heaven.

To all those who are seeking to know the meaning of life and what exactly is the truth of life, this publication shall be a God-sent material as it shall open the door to a completely new life for you. Moreover, in case you find the publication useful for your spiritual healing, development and growth please do not forget to pass it on to other like-minded seekers.

Foreword
The Dishonourable Africans is the second part of the essays on the millennium reflections on Africa.

This essay is attempting to draw out pertinent issues and to raise fundamental questions on the truth and fallacy of the concept of leadership in Africa.

In writing this essay, we have borrowed from history not as onlooker but as co-participant of the history to situate, as much as possible, in a rational perspective sense the leadership crisis and its consequent socio-economic effects on Africa. The choice of history as a tool for analysis is informed by the knowledge of the principle of cumulative effect of circumstances and interwoven events in the evolution and formulation of ideas and beliefs that translate into civilization.

This essay recognises the interconnectedness of life, the cross-fertilisation of knowledge among different racial groups, and the inevitable impact of these exchanges regardless of its nature - mutual or forced - as they dictate fundamental changes in the cultures, values, habits, languages and other traditions of a society.

In other words, the current culture and civilization of any people is the result of the opportunities they have had to meet, to share and to exchange ideas, beliefs, habits, practices, etc. with others in the past. Without this cultural intercourse, no group of people is capable of changing from their age long customs and traditions handed to them by their highly respected and beatified ancestors.

However, this is not to say that the exchange of cultural artefacts are always mutual or demanded, sometimes they are forced on a conquered people/nation by their conquerors. Notwithstanding the manner in which the exchanges took place, the outcome is a movement away from the hitherto established way of life into something new and different. Again, it does not always necessarily mean a beneficial change.

In the Beginning…
History is a valuable tool for looking back at the progress humanity have made since the recorded journey of life began. It is quite tempting and easier too for most analysts to start the analysis of leadership problem in Africa by merely focusing on the contemporary events around Africa. This approach cannot do much good than to give superficial accounts of the issues in focus.

Any type of analysis that focuses only on the present can only confirm what George Santayana said about the link between progress and memory. He said, “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness… Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”1 A recollection of the history of the past is a sure antidote for thoughtlessness and foolishness. History is definitely a sure weapon if we desire to shatter the bliss that ignorance bestows on its friends.

In the ancient days, when societies were still simple and less differentiated, age was the main qualification for leadership position. The reason for this may not be too far fetched. The manner in which communities came into existence might be responsible. According to H. G. Wells in A Short History of the World, “Probably the earliest human societies, in the opening stages of the true human story, were small family groups.” 2

It could be inferred that possibly a single family started most primitive societies. For example, the scenario could be as follows: when a prehistoric man comes of age he takes a wife and together they would move away to establish a homestead for themselves. They would have looked for a place where land, water, and games were in good supply. Depending on the blessing of nature, good luck and hard work, the family would multiply in time.

Sons would become fathers and fathers would become grandfathers and great grandfathers. Within five or more generations, the community might be numbering in the hundreds. Easily and without dispute, the children would accept the founding father as the patriarch and the last authority consulted whenever the need arose. If he was a good-natured man - kind, loving and a good manager of men and resources - he stood a good chance to become an ancestral deity after his death. At his death, without any contest, the oldest male child would step into his shoes as the head of the community. This was the natural progression of leadership in the ancient times. It was a universal trend found in every society before the spirits of ambition, greed, avarice and envy reared their destructive heads into the serene social affairs of humankind.

These vices led to a redefinition of the values of societies in the terminology of war. Communities began to move away from a ‘peacefare’ culture to a warfare culture. Ruthless and bloodthirsty men began to take control of communities and societies. The only claim they had to leadership positions of the community was premised on their conniving abilities and killing skills as they perpetrated dastardly crimes of patricide, regicide and the cold-blooded murder of all the legitimate leaders around.

A paradigm shift soon followed: whereas most communities were once open, communal, and built on a foundation of love-oriented relationship amongst families and friends, communities changed into hate-dominated, fear-oriented, clandestine, divisive, and strife-ridden hell on earth. As these ambitious ruinous characters seized power within communities, their insatiable innate nature rose higher and higher. They progressively moved to neighbouring communities to over-run as many communities as possible within their reach. This brief historical account was the genesis of all known kingdoms and empires in the world.

Naturally, it is customary for new power-holders in communities, kingdoms or empires to redefine leadership qualities and to determine leadership qualifications in terms of loyalty of the conquered peoples to whoever was on the throne of the kingdom. The most loyal subjects who can die for the king or emperor for good or bad causes were often held up as worthy role models for leadership positions. It was from these groups that noble men and the class of nobility emerged.

In the real sense, the nobles of all empires and kingdoms were the lackeys, the lapdogs, the bootlickers and all other scallywags of the land. The nobles were those opportunists who readily sang the praises of the new murderous gangsters on the throne.

Case Study: Leadership Development and Practice
We have a ready-made example of leadership development and practice from the last known empire on planet earth. The British Empire, in every respect, qualifies for the title of an empire. The people of Britain even said so when the English patriots proudly referred to the international colonial institution they developed as ‘the empire where the sun never sets’. Let us use this empire for a study of leadership development in our present world.

The British Empire was an archetype of all known empires that had come and gone before it. The historical materials on Great Britain confirm the hypothesis that it is the political gangsters of societies, which ultimately evolved into the leadership class of our world. Let us take a quick peep at the start of this empire when Duke William the Conqueror matched triumphantly into England from Normandy in 1066.

In the eleventh century, the profession of mercenaries was a well-established trade in mainland Europe. Soldiers of fortune roamed all over Europe looking for private or state commissions. The bulk of the people around Duke William of Normandy were soldiers of fortune. The moral wrong or right of a cause is of no significance to these lots. They fight and kill or be killed to earn a living and they ask no moral or ethical question whatsoever in the cause of duty.

The Roman Catholic Church, as the spiritual and political head of the then world, was also a conniving patron that was ready to give spiritual and divine blessings to the soldiers before and after battles as long as they can pay the required penance to the church in cash or kind.

Therefore, William the Conqueror having obtained the support of the then Pope of the Catholic Church against the newly crowned King Harold of England sailed across the English Channel to dispossess cousin-in-law Harold of his throne. William killed King Harold at the battle of Hasting and automatically, by the law of barbarians of that era, the land and the people of England became that of William.

He proceeded accordingly in the fashion of the time to award parcels of land to his trusted soldiers and allies as payments for their military services. The new landowners who became the Lords, Earls, Dukes, and Noblemen of England were, accordingly, the mercenaries, the assassins, the heinous killers, and the rapists from mainland Europe.

This new class of elites held allegiance to none but King William. They became, by default, the new leaders of the people of England and Wales. The legitimacy of the power of this type of leaders to rule was that accorded by military force and civil brutality. It was therefore a common practice for these leaders not to live among the people they governed but in heavily armed and guarded castles. The reason is obvious; they were aware that the people under their yoke hated their guts. This tactic sits well with one of the ingenuous advice of Machiavelli in The Prince, “A prince who fears his own people more than he does foreigners should build fortresses…” 3

However, the fundamental lessons of this history were: First, it confirmed the principle of the idiom, ‘might is right’ as the most essential factor to determine the legitimacy of anyone to rule over a country or people. In addition, it affirmed that it is only through the waging of successful bloody wars against one’s kith and kin or enemies that leaders of so-called progressive empires could emerge.

Second, it laid the precedence that it is only through the patronage of the reigning King or power that any subject under the Crown or any government can aspire to a position of honour and leadership. Therefore, for many centuries afterwards, the life chances of subjects to live or to have a modicum of decent life depended on his/her demonstrated loyalty to the king. For any subject to challenge the king on his immoral use of power, or on his inhuman rule, or on the corruption of his courtiers or on the suffering of the king’s subjects was enough to incur a death sentence from the king.

Certainly, most of those sentenced to death by the kings of this empire over time, were the subjects driven by moral truth to raise objection on the immorality of monarchical rule both in its conceptual form and in its practices. In the official history books written under the royal commission or warrant of these kings by loyal opportunist authors, such men and women of conscience were portrayed as traitors to the crown and to the fatherland. We can deduce that if we recall these history books and have them reviewed by impartial editors, we might not be surprised to discover that those hitherto branded, maligned and persecuted as enemies of the people, were indeed the true leaders of our world.

Is it therefore right from the abridged historical facts to say that since the coming into being of kingdoms and empires on planet earth, the class of people who have been holding leadership positions in all societies are the heinous, despicable and detestable characters? Like many other perverted virtues and values of our world, it is obvious that the perversion of the concept of leadership that started with the warring hoodlums and that transformed hooligans and hired killers into royalties and noblemen, has stretched far and wide to corrupt the entire human race. The seed of this deadly virus has grown and like a deadly cancer, it has spread its tentacles into every cranny of our lives to corrupt every moral and spiritual value in human existence.

In our case study of the empire of Britain, we have found that those who emerged as political leaders were the military warlords of the king while the economic leaders were those drawn from the loyal group who got the royal warrant of approval from the king to sell and to buy in the kingdom.

Understandably, it should be noted that only the trusted subjects in the good books of the crown courtiers could get recommendations to receive royal warrants to trade in the realm of the King. Similarly, the civic leaders were those subjects drawn from the turncoats or spies willing to betray the trusts of family and friends in return for royal titles and patronages. This is the history of contemporary leadership styles and practices in the world.

Therefore, we can infer that whatever we have in place on planet earth under any name – democracy or socialism or communism - is a mere disguise of the most unnatural, unethical and immoral practices ever created by the evil class of humankinds. Hence, we can recognise that the fundamental philosophy of leadership among all the civilized political ideologies of the world is one that came forth from a single evil vine.

Simply, it is one cooked in the philosophy that believes in the ideology of ‘might is right’ and it is only under this barbaric belief that the scoundrels of the world can wield political, economic and religious powers.

The Age of Reformation
The above leadership arrangement was the commonly acceptable practice in Europe until the spirit of renaissance inspired creativity in science, architecture, poetry, sculpture, painting and political theory in the 14th century Italy. This epochal development paved the way for the thinkers of that period to challenge the status quo of power relationships firmly and ingenuously established between the ‘spiritual’ church and the political state. The awareness created and nurtured by the renaissance spirit that sought alternative ideas on the meaning of life took the cover off the age-long dogmas propagated by the church.

This new awareness exposed the people of Europe to the fact that the realm of knowledge was deeper and wider than the propaganda of ‘slavedom’ the church was dishing out. The burst of renaissance enlightenment contributed immensely to the ensuing reformation of civic and political institutions of governance across Europe.

Most importantly, the creative processes in artistic and intellectual engagements that ushered in the renaissance era led to the invention of the printing press in Germany in the 1450s. The invention of the press further succeeded in exposing and eventually dissolving the exploitative symbiotic relationship between the Church and the sovereign crowns of Europe. Before the renaissance, the crown used the Church of Rome as cover to claim a divine political right to rule while the church used the crowns as its subordinate partners in crime as she also claimed a divine right to spiritual leadership and political power of the world.

The gain made from the invention of the printing press was the long overdue proliferation of the hitherto jealously concealed sacred holy books of the church into many reading hands in Europe. This was the first successful battle against the holy lies of the Church and her lying priests. The simple access that the thinkers of the society had to see and read the contents of the ‘holy book’ instantly cured them of their blindness. For the first time the enlightened ones saw the holy lies of the church for what they were – a park of evil exploitative mechanisms instituted by the priests for the oppressive manipulation of the simple-hearted, the gullible and the ignorant people of the world.

However, according to recorded history the result of the above development was a mild revolution that successfully eroded and took away a sizeable chunk of the political power held by the Roman Catholic Church. The mushrooming protesters of the Christian world gained a breath of fresh air of freedom; particularly, the freedom to interpret the Holy Scripture and to worship their God as the spirit moved them. In those regions of Europe where the Crowns were clever, the reigning kings quickly sided with the protesters to usurp the leadership of the protesting local Christians against Rome.

The Church of England and other Crown-owned churches of Europe were the fall-out of the schism that followed the renaissance experience. The history of the establishment of the Church of England, a very prominent missionary in the civilizing business of Africa, is a fascinating story. It will not attract our attention in this dialogue but it is worthy of a review by all seekers of the truth of life.

Although, the printing press tarnished the claim of the Church to a universal divine right and power to rule, it inadvertently transferred these same rights and powers to the various Crowns of Europe. It took another one hundred years of vigorous agitation by all kinds of enlightened people of Europe before the fundamental rights of the people to liberty, equality and justice became popular agenda issues.

It was the popularity of this new evolving philosophy developed, nurtured and promoted by thinkers and pamphleteers all across Europe on the moral and ethical concepts of fundamental rights of man that informed the British Civil War (1642-1649), the American War of Independence (1775-1781) and the French Revolution (1789-1794). These separate but intertwined upheavals on the moral question of leadership were the principal political events that fashioned the present civilization of the world.

The above is the genesis of how and where the moral and ethical values that informed the institutions of leadership in the world evolved. The role of hoodlums turned monarchs and their cohorts turned noblemen in the standardisation of societal values and cultures cannot be over emphasised. It therefore follows naturally that the standards defined and set by these believers in the faith of ‘might is right’ could not be different from their own innate murderous and avaricious natures.

Consequently and in actual sense, from time immemorial the hoodlums in every society hijacked and captured the leadership positions of our world. Historical records showed that the colonialists brought this unnatural and heinous leadership practice to Africa. The colonial managers, schooled in the perversions established by their rulers, had no difficulty in transferring wholesale this kind of values and morality of leadership to Africa. We shall now attempt to focus attention on Africa as we trace the contribution of the colonial overlords to the emergence of modern leadership practices in Africa.

Leadership Practices in Pre-Colonial Africa
You might be wondering what is the relevance of the history of Europe to leadership problem in Africa. I think it is necessary to trace the problems of Africa as far back as we can in history if indeed we are sincere about finding solutions.

The important reason for the brief excursion into the history of Europe flows from the realisation that Africa, as at today, has no original identity of its own. Since the Arabs and the Europeans came into Africa, the cultural values now in place are those imposed by these two races. There is nothing whatsoever indigenous anymore about the ways of life in Africa since Africans encountered the Arabs and the Europeans.

Most Africans, because of short memory resulting in the inability to look far back, have failed to realise that everything we now attribute to African way of life were cultural impositions from abroad. For example, the belief systems and the ensuing religious institutions, the most important spiritual commodity in the life of a people, have been exchanged for the imported beliefs and faiths brewed in the Middle East and packaged for export from Europe.

It is on record that the foreign invaders ridiculed the age-long cultural institutions in Africa, which depicted and reflected the social, cultural, economic and political beliefs of the continent. The supremacist ideology of the foreign invaders categorically and recklessly denounced all the established cultures or ways of life in Africa as primitive, pagan and evil. It is unfortunate that most Africans brought up under this ideology have grown up to repeat the supremacist foreign ideas and even have accepted the propaganda fashioned and circulated by the foreigners that there is nothing at all of benefit to mankind in Africa’s past.

The brainwashed Africans even agreed that we should bury and forget our cultural past because they have accepted it was a past marred in idolatry and evil. These are the issues, which informed the brief historical antecedents highlighted above. The realisation that all the philosophical beliefs, institutional frameworks and cultural organisations presently on the soil of Africa were either borrowed or imposed by foreigners stimulated this analysis. Having identified one of the foreigners as Europeans it was therefore necessary to review the history of leadership in Europe in order to understand the underlying philosophy of leadership practices in Africa.

Before the arrival of the Europeans and Arabs in Africa, most African societies defined leadership status by age. The social units within a community were distinguishable only by the order of age grades. For example, a collection of male children born in a particular year in a community form a band or club with an identifiable name or other symbol. The members of the age-grade club that grew up together formed strong bonds of friendship or fraternity that often stand them in good and bad times throughout their lifetimes. It was from among the various age bands that each club chose leaders to represent the interest of the club in the affairs of the community.

The selection of who shall lead in a particular age-grade comes naturally. Since members virtually live under each other’s shadows, it was easy to identify those with natural leadership qualities and dispositions. In addition, each community, divided into sections or quarters, are made up of units of families who and most likely are members of one extended family. Leadership within an extended family was naturally decided in favour of the most senior member in the clan or section. In a section, quarter or entire community, the status that an individual member enjoyed apart from age depended on performance capabilities in a host of valuable skills necessary for the survival of the community. Skills like hunting, farming, artisanship, games, music, singing, dancing, oratory, good memory for oral history etc. could earn an individual a good standing within the community for leadership duties.

Every African society like every other society in the world naturally had some rudimentary knowledge or innate understanding of divinity. The African philosophy of life was rooted in the reality, which believes there is a power or force that governs creations. Africans had a sense that strongly believes that the power of life is never too far away.

This awareness dictated the customary practice found amongst Africans to consult the power of life at times when they have to make important decisions. There was no other sensitive decision than the appointment or selection or election of a leader or of leaders in the community. Each society had well-established institutions for divine affairs. The priests, witchdoctors, medicine men, or women that tended to the affairs of the divine institutions were always available for such sacred duties. 1

These divine institutions made appointment and selection of leaders in a community credible because they would have consulted the governing deity or deities of the society before they confirmed leadership status on anyone. There was a big element of trust in the love and power of the deities and in the men and women of the priesthood. For example, members of community were aware that to become a priest was not a career path anybody would normally choose; and they were aware that only the gods/deities call people into priesthood.

A priest therefore did not need to fear any member of the community but the deity that selected him or her into its service. It was therefore very easy for a priest to pronounce the truth on any matter as the supervisory deities of the community revealed them. Under this divine grace, the priests enjoyed a high social regard and respect. The pronouncements that the priests made when consulted on who should lead in a community were always accepted and remained binding on all concerned.

This was the serene social and political atmosphere in practice in Africa. Open community meetings were the norm and not the exception for decision-making. Every adult male member of the community had a right to participate and contribute to the deliberations and discussions on community affairs. 2 The elders/chiefs of each of the composite extended family naturally constituted the supreme council or courts of arbitration, referencing and consultation on all matters of importance in the community.

Among the elders were found the community historian, community encyclopaedia or library, the community sage or orator, community pharmacist or herbalist or medicine-man etc. who were always at hand to correct and check the exuberant excesses of younger members of the community on matters of tradition and custom. The age grade associations helped maintain a form of class differentiation. Deference to elders was a virtue expected of well-mannered young persons. Each child in a community was a child of every elder in the community. Each elder was a father/mother to every child in the community. Each member of a senior age grade was a sister/brother to every junior age grade.

This was the tradition that the Arabs and Europeans condemned to death and replaced with a monarchical tradition of leadership by imposition through a superior military force of occupation. The imposition of leaders threw over board the traditional checks and balances within African communities that ensured only the most qualified and the most competent person attained leadership status. The process of leadership selection in Africa moved away from a conceptual frame that had faith in the demonstrated innate abilities and natural talents of its members to a new concept that puts faith in book intelligence.

It was under the aegis of this new faith that the Arabs selected new leaders for Africa among the new converts that showed fast tendency to commit to memory verses of Koran while the Europeans selected new leaders among those Africans who could learn and understand the European language. This historical development dictated that henceforth the selection of African political and economic leaders could only come from the pool of foreign trained and foreign educated Africans.

The local informal and seemingly unstructured traditional practices that served the purpose of education and training of the young persons were no longer good enough. Indeed, the missionaries conditioned Africans to believe that since they had no writing skills they could not transfer any knowledge to their wards. They condemned as pagan practices the historic ancient knowledge earlier passed down through religious rituals and the highly structured social and cultural customs. Neither of these two supremacist powers could see the sense and the wisdom behind all the elaborate ceremonies that accompanied birth, death, marriage, planting, harvesting, disaster, sickness and all other forms of cultural undertakings as a body of intellectual materials purposely wrapped and preserved in symbols. They could not understand the role of the medicine men/women, priests/priestesses and other local luminaries that formed the sacred and secret guilds for the protection of intellectual property rights of the communities.

It is true that superstitions, taboos and fear of the power of nature were effectively utilised by the sacred and secret guilds both as intellectual materials for teaching the society’s mores and as psychosocial tools to condition the psyche of the people into cultural obedience for political harmony. Yet, we could argue that this body of superstitious materials were indeed philosophical and pseudo-scientific materials compiled over the years by gifted and knowledgeable members of the society.

However, since it was customary and of course sensible to guard jealously the modus operandi of the superstitions, the local intellectuals naturally refuse to divulge the full meaning of the superstitious ceremonies and taboos established for driving off evil forces or for solving social, physical, spiritual and health problems. Because of the pragmatic attitudes of the local intellectuals for secrecy, which served the illusory need of social elevation and power acquisition (a typical psychosocial need of all Homo sapiens), the successive generations could not grasp the scientific underpinning and the political imperatives of the cultural ceremonies, rituals and fetishes of their societies.

The need to protect and preserve the intellectual property rights of the community progressively led to secret associations or cults or what we call professional organisations in modern language. It was an established tradition for cult members to undergo elaborate initiation ceremonies; to swear on oath to be loyal; and to give solemn promise never to divulge the secrets of the cult to non-members. This tendency for secrecy was one of the practical manifestations of the universal human nature that strives at all cost to guard jealously any advantage that gives power over other lesser persons. It is a demonstration of the innate psychological need for self worth among one’s peers and the yearning desires for social distinction, prestige and recognition in the society to which one belongs.

The development of the institution of priest and priestess seem to take a similar route in all societies. Often, it starts with the experience of a reflective and gifted individual who through rigorous application of the mind to issues that pertain to his/her environment became awakened into special knowledge and understanding of some issues of life. It is again an added advantage when the discovered knowledge solved some welfare problems of the society.

The gifted individual who declared a true revelation to the society would naturally draw people or believers, particularly those that witnessed the efficacy of the declared truth. There is no gain saying that the people would naturally accept this wise person during his/her lifetime as a worthy leader. Again, at his/her death a cult would likely evolve in his/her name to codify his/her habits and life styles into veritable rituals of faith and belief for others to emulate and follow. This process created every known deity as well as every religious faith in the world.

As earlier mentioned, the European values, styles and manners of leadership have dominated the African political horizon since the arrival of Imperial Europe in Africa. It is on record that the Europeans met thriving social and political institutions when they arrived in Africa. They saw communities that had geographical boundaries. They found that African societies maintained a relatively peaceful cultural and political cohesiveness within an ethnic group. Although, the forms of political organisation vary from place to place but the institution of kings/chiefs was a common feature in West and East Africa. Most communities were small but they were well organised around tribal chiefs/kings who were equally assisted by councils of junior chiefs.

These minor chiefs were directly responsible for the organisation of political, cultural and social affairs of their society. The African communities had respect for property rights on products and commodities that an individual produced from the soil. The community held land in trust under family titles but open its usage to every individual member of the community. There was no obsession among Africans to secure and acquire land by force and plunder as practiced in Europe under a conquest and rent culture. These were the brief historical facts on the socio-economic and political institutions of life in Africa before the arrival of Arabs and Europeans.

Leadership Practices in Colonial Africa
A study of the political and economic history of ancient Europe showed that its social forces were couched on a value premise that puts high credence on the inalienable relation between land ownership and political power. It is a political economy, which associates war with riches and the belief brought untold hardship to the people of Europe for many centuries. It led to incessant wars between and within families, communities and nations for land acquisition, possession and control. The institution of royalty in Europe was based on the result of calculated heinous acts whereby the most eccentric powerful band of savages seized by carnage, pillage and plunder the possessions of their neighbours.

The aggressors often spiced these types of murderous expeditions with hideous form of ethnic cleansing of the conquered neighbours and the enslavement of survivors as serfs. The vestiges of this kind of culture are still very much around today in Europe, even in the 21st century as witnessed in the former Yugoslavia. The conquerors would then force the former owners of the land to eke out a living through an arrangement of levy or rent payment (in kind or cash) before the conquered people could have access to the use of their confiscated land. This was the factual historical genesis of how the modern sophisticated prim and proper royal nobilities of Europe acquired their wealth, power and enormous social ‘prestige’.

Furthermore, the conquerors in Europe established patriarchal dynasties rigidly based on the right of primogeniture. This is a tradition that recognizes an unjust legal principle, which established inequality among children since it allows only the first son to inherit all the family wealth particularly land property. 3 In the case where there were more than one son in the family, the subsequent sons were turned loose and forced to fend for themselves as best as they could.

It was therefore not a mere coincidence that most of the second or third or fourth sons of the powerful names in Europe were among the successful adventurers, slave merchants, missionaries, soldiers of fortune, pirates and colonial administrators. These were the men forced by circumstances of position of birth to look for their own haven or empires outside of Europe. Therefore, for the outcasts of Europe the colonial mission became a task of life or death. These men had nothing to lose anymore and so their commitment to colonialism was total and merciless.

The aforementioned were the calibre of people that forced their ways into Africa. They were the losers of Europe in search of land and fortune. They were the angry and bitter men who gladly took their revenge of deprivation on innocent Africans. They were happy to transfer all the barbaric cultures of their native lands into Africa. In the process, they captured land and slaves and following in the tradition and culture of the Caucasian race, they became new landowners and the uncrowned leaders of Africa.

In addition, they managed to establish their own dynasty and mini-empires with all the social trimmings of the so-called civilisation. They displayed all the attributes of mini-gods as poor Africans hammock-carried (or is it chauffer-driven?) them across the jungles of Africa. In short, they transferred wholesale every ruinous idolatrous leadership practice of inequality of persons into Africa.

At the time the Europeans met Africans this barbaric value orientation was very strange to the culture of Africa. At this particular period in history, most African societies still held land in trust for the use of all and the leaders had no ambition to propagate dynastic rule under a particular family name. Since there was no aristocratic rent collector’s class in Africa, most African societies freely secured and assured the means of production for all. Therefore, wealth acquisition depended greatly on personal effort, skill and hard work.

Africa had no such culture whereby one clever savage man would rent out pieces of stolen land to his neighbours for outrageous payment that takes almost 80% of the annual produce of the renter. The absence of this inhuman and callous culture ensured equality of persons in both spirit and practice in Africa. As a result, there was no great kings or nobles scrounging on the sweat of their neighbours. Each member and even the king of the community learned to fend for themselves as best as possible. Therefore, each member of the society had full control over the products of the fruit of his/her own labour.

The forceful incursion of Arabs and Europeans into Africa started a negative renaissance that succeeded in turning the age-long values of African societies upside-down. With the advent of slavery, Africans threw overboard the hitherto much-cherished value that accepts the philosophy of everyone being his/her neighbours’ keepers. The foreign invaders from the West and the Middle East taught the first African contacts they met rudimentary knowledge and skill of the then international trade particularly the one that pertains to how to lure, con and sell one’s trusting hinterland neighbours as well as family members to slave merchants. Some African societies are yet to cure themselves of the vestiges of the evil practice in human trade cultivated through the contact with foreign adventurers.

The age-long friendly exchange by barter in produce commodities changed to hostile exchange of human commodity for foreign luxury goods and arms. African coastal traders soon realised it was easier to con their neighbours into slavery than to engage in traditional strenuous activities of farming. It was not long before ethnic clashes began to rear their heads in the length and breadth of Africa. Thus, Africa received the brute end of the burst of enlightenment that the Italian renaissance of the 15th century gave to Europe as well as the perverted versions of the sacred teachings of equality of persons before God that Mohammed of Mecca gave to the Arabs in the seventh century. With the rich supply of guns, machete and other arms into Africa, each ethnic group moved against its near or far neighbour to hunt them down for the booming slave market.

The Africans living on the coast made the first contact with the Arabs and Europeans. They got, by exchanging their cousins, rich supply of guns and firearms to hunt the hinterland of the continent for slaves. The Africans that lived by the seashores became exceedingly wealthy in foreign money and foreign goods. Consequently, they gained political power over their poorer hinterland neighbours. They were the first crop of African ‘middlemen’ cultivated on the African soil by Arabs and Europeans. For over 400 years, they performed the intermediary’s role profitably well. In West Africa, they were the first to accept European religion and western education. The colonial managers through the missionaries trained their children to become interpreters, priests, teachers and lawyers.

As interpreters, they became corrupt as they swindled their own kind by misrepresenting issues to the disadvantage of their racial groups. As priests, they professed a belief in a doctrine to which they had no clear understanding of the true meaning of the concepts and symbols of the faith in question. They embraced and propagated fictions, myths and pure lies on the meaning of life.

As teachers, they were half-bred in the knowledge they disseminated to their wards thereby leading their generation into the wilderness of ignorance.

As lawyers, they found their true calling in the act of practical legalistic deception. They imbibed all the phoney habits – wearing wigs, dressing like masquerades, etc. - of learned men of law. They sat foolishly in the prosecution or in the defence of their kinds under every law of injustice instituted by the colonial governors.

Since their understanding was limited, they failed to see the fundamental illegality of the whole institution of colonialism as well as the law that emanated out of such unjust imperial and feudal establishments.

Another ingenuous trick of the colonial administration was the recruitment of illiterate Africans from the hinterland as colonial territorial/frontier soldiers and security operatives. The peculiar requirements that qualified these men for recruitment into the colonial force were: tall heights, strong arms and broad chests but most importantly, small brains.

As recruits in the colonial army, they regularly used them to quell every agitation that reared its head from the group or tribes of supposedly educated Africans. It was from these recruits that the colonial administrations fashioned out various Colonial Armed Forces. The services of these illiterate Africans as soldiers and gendarmes were utilised satisfactorily during the Second World War.

The colonial administrations later converted this crop of African illiterate soldiers into the officer’s corps of the Armed Forces of the countries on the eve of independence. The military personnel of the converted colonial territorial armed forces became the second joker after the one of political independence without economic independence that would eventually thwart the aspiration of Africans for true freedom. The colonial managers effectively called the military joker into action after a short period of independence to dislodge the pathetic political illiterates in power.

The colonial governments all over Africa relied on these crops of Africans along with the ‘forward-looking’ traditional rulers that the white rulers installed or sponsored as aides for the direct and indirect colonial administration. These crops of Africans – illiterate soldiers, semi-literate teachers, lawyers, interpreters, priests and traditional rulers - were willing and they were ever ready to imitate as they aped every act, every imperial tradition or every snobbish mannerism of the white rulers. 4

Unfortunately, these misguided Africans were merely mimicking the white man’s way, as they had no conceptual understanding of why the white men did any of the things they did. The hypocritical habits and attitudes of this group of Africans irritated both the white men and their African brothers. As a result, they never received any respect from either the white rulers or the African folks.
We found the evidence of this in the many cases of rebellion and disobedience recorded anytime the colonial managers appointed a black person to lead and direct the affairs of any unit of the colonial administration. 5 The foregoing were the seeds of perversion that gave birth to a good number of the crop of latter-day leaders of Africa

Raymond Leslie Buell in The Native Problem in Africa observed that, “Whether under direct or indirect rule, European officials are obliged to rely upon native subordinates and aides. These aides may be traditional rulers, or they may be educated clerks.” He added, “In many of these cases, the educated natives showed that they had lost all sympathy for the group out of which they came and that they had no compunction in abusing their power for personal ends. In all of these cases the educated class failed to command the respect of the people.”6

The Europeans who dealt directly with these Africans in Africa described them as half educated and as ‘likeable rogues’. 7 To refer to these Africans as half or quarter educated was simply being mischievous. The only education the missionaries exposed these hapless Africans was the acquisition of literacy skill – the ability to read and write the European languages.

In addition, these Africans were shepherded to and rooted strictly in Bible or Koran knowledge that forced them to imbibe without questioning new hypocritical values of fake piety, holier-than-though attitudes and foreign cultures, the meaning of which they never understood. They foolishly and drastically exchanged the hitherto common native understanding on the meaning of life that had served the spiritual and social needs of Africa for centuries for those borrowed from the Arabian and Jewish philosophy. The missionaries forced fed, brain washed and made Africans to swallow wholeheartedly all the Jewish mythological stories of the Bible as the only historical absolute truth of life.

Under these innocuous foreign beliefs and their attendant cultural enslavement, the half-educated Africans threw away all the inherited indigenous socio-cultural knowledge, ancestral beliefs and religious practices of Africa. Their tutors encouraged them to wage war against every facet of African beliefs and cultures. They destroyed shrines, symbols, artworks, monuments and everything that have the slightest bearing on African indigenous way of life. This senseless display of religious zeal was possible because the half educated Africans accepted without questioning the embellished Bible stories and the recorded self-serving Jewish history as the beginning and the end of history of all humankinds.