On a Platter of Bondage

“We got our freedom on a platter of gold without firing a shot. Yet, we sustained more injuries and casualties than those who fought physically for their independence”

Hi, Jerry.

Hi, Mac.

By the way, what’s your full name?

I’m Jeremiah Awolowo.

From Niagara?

Photo credit: Nasirryu.com

Yes, but this Niagara is a country, not a waterfall!

I know. Actually I was in your country in 1963. It was during a stopover on my way from Mecca. I was heartily welcomed by your people who gave me the name ‘Omowale’. By the time I left for Ghana, I had become Alhaji “Omowale” Malcolm X.

How come the ‘X’? Are you a mathematician?

It’s a long story but briefly, it’s my own personal reaction to the stigma of slavery in the Americas. You know what? When an African was sold into slavery in those days, he was forced to adopt the slave master’s name for identification. My own forefathers were forced to drop their authentic African name and adopt the slave master’s which was ‘Little’ but I ain’t got nothing to do with no ‘Little’ so I said to hell with a Jim Crow name. Instead, I put an ‘X’ to stand in place of ‘Little’ to represent that unknown African name which my generation had lost. That’s how I came to be known as Malcolm X. In fact, that’s one of the propelling forces behind my revolutionary zeal during the Jim Crow days and I must thank El-Shabbard and Prophet Elijah of the Nation of Islam for their ideological support. I also remember the young and old comrades like Angela Davis and the Soledad Brothers, George Meredith, Claude Mackay, Marcus Garvey, Muhammad Ali and the hard-core militants in the Black Panther group. I must not fail to mention, also, the contributions of the clerics like Rev. Martin Luther King Jnr., Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Rev. Jesse Jackson and others who used their pulpits to rail against racist America.

They must have served the cause very well with their non-violence approach.

Not much. We had to speak to the oppressors in the language they understood. Thus, we had to fight our way through Alabama and Georgia and down the valleys of the Mississippi and Tennessee in search of liberty and freedom from Jim Crow, using every instrument of violence available to drive home our point. How was your own experience in South Africa, Mr. Walter Sisulu?

I think apartheid was a perfect clone of Jim Crow but our own experience was worse. It all had to do with extreme separation and inequality but our brave men and women fought the apartheid warlords to a standstill in the streets of Soweto and in the mines of Guateng. From the kraal to the veld, the brave Xhosa and Zulu warriors took the battle to the segregationists. We used everything we had also to fight the war. The sangoma, I mean the so-called witch doctors, helped to invoke the spirits of our ancestors to cast an evil spell on the land grabbers who turned Africans to squatters on their God-given land. Amandla!

Walter and Mac, I envy both of you. Your people became free after fighting vigorously for their freedom. In the process, you became stronger, more united and better focussed as a nation. In our own case, we got our freedom on a platter of gold without firing a shot. Yet, we sustained more injuries and casualties than those who fought physically for their independence. Since the British lowered the Union Jack in 1960, we have been in perpetual bondage. They, the colonial masters, knew that ours was an aggregate of nations encapsulated in one geographical expression called Niagara but they did nothing to counter or minimise the seismic effects of the centrifugal forces that were bound to pull the country apart. Instead, they cunningly stepped back after sowing the seeds of discord and instability by bestowing political leadership on a section they perceived to be disadvantaged in the socio-political equation of the emerging ‘nation’. That seed later grew into a wild baobab tree with varying branches of corruption, crises, coups, counter coups, civil war and, now, ‘cannibalism’, judging by the latest news from the terrestrial world. Those primordial sentiments and forces will continue to pull that geographical expression apart. Is that not so, Dike?

I disagree, Chief Awolowo. If our country were a mere geographical expression, the feuding forces would not have embarked on a systematic elimination of our people during the 1966 crisis and the subsequent Civil War. They surely had something in mind more than a united geographical expression they claimed to be fighting for. There is no way anybody can rule out the expansionist tendencies of the then ruling cabal. You will remember, chief, that this was how the Sundiatas, the Mansa Musas and the Mansa Ules went about expanding the frontiers of the old Mali Empire even to as far as Argungun and Gobir in Niagara. And this is what probably caught the fancy of the old caliphs to nurture the ambition to extend the boundaries of the Caliphate to as far as the Atlantic Ocean. Raji Abdallah, you remember? If I’m wrong, let me know since you were one of the earliest political activists from the North.

Professor Dike, we are saying the same thing. The British sowed the horrible seed and left with their tails between their legs while the people were left in a quandary on how to solve the various post-colonial problems. Since we changed mortality to immortality, you would discover that those who have been joining us here do not have good news to tell. It’s either the North is fighting the South or Muslims and Christians are killing one another or Hausas are attacking Igbos with machetes or Yorubas are yabbing and stabbing the Fulani. For how long can a nation continue to be in a state of anomie and perpetual disharmony? Prof, tell me. For how long will our people continue to suffer from internal strifes, external threats and inordinate ambition of the larger groups to out-British the British in colonising the minorities? Lawyer Akande who arrived a few days ago was telling me that too many ethnic militias are roaming the landscape demanding self-determination and causing political haemorrhage everyday. Could this be what we fought for? Is October 1 no longer symbolic of freedom and independence? My God!

Questions, questions, questions. But, gentlemen, we just have to wind up here. Angel Gabriel has just signaled to me that it’s time for Holy Ghost Fire. As they do on earth, so we do in heaven. Thank you very much and happy anniversary.

On a Platter of Bondage was first published in TELL October 4, 2004.