I will tell you a story, nay, a joke. The village drunk after a night out in the local tavern, decided to take a short cut home, through the village cemetary. Funnily that was the night two village rascals chose to raid the apple orchard near the cemetary. They had after their escapade decided to retire into a fresh dug but of course unoccupied grave to share their loot. So, it it came about that as our village drunk was approaching, he heard coming from the grave “One for you, and this one for you” Our friend in his drunken state assumed that this must be the devil sharing out the souls of sinners to his cohorts, started creeping away. Suddenly, in the open grave, one apple rolled away from the lot. So when our village drunk heard Oh, and that is one trying to get away, and thinking that it was him that was being referred to , you can make your own conjectures at what he did next…
However, the main gist of this story is not about the village drunk, but on the sharing – One for you, one for the bwana, one for the chief, one for the oga …
In the year, 1885, the German Chanllelor, Von Bismark, in his pultrid Aryan race desdain called the leaders of European and other Western powers of the time, and they gathered together like vultures in what is now recorded in the book of infamy of world history as the Berlin conference: the unmentionable agenda being the balkanisation of Africa. This unthinkable inhuman act, which its far reaching wickedness quite surpassed the horrors of the Slave Trade inavertently led to terrible dark era in Africa that still haunts this innocent continent and still chains Africa to the colonial masters that emerged from the forceful division. Erstwhile societies and communities that had shared values and sociology were torn apart. Meanwhile in this inhuman balkanization, societies and kingdoms and peoples that have nothing in common in language, culture, traditions and even religion ware forced into strange relationship. These the white colonialists called countries, with their political divisions and definations and branded them any absurd name they could think of. Then they shared these ridiculous monstrosities amongst themselves.
The desdain with which this act was perpetuated is reflected in the names or rather labels that were that were imposed on some of these new fangled regions. No attempts were made by these sharers to brand these their newly acquired territories with dignified names – No – instead one region is Niger area, the other Gold Coast, another Upper Volta while the other is South Africa and the other South West Africa, with the other Central African Republic. Happily some of these lands have found it fit to jettison these colonial nomenclatures and revert to more acceptable traditional African names.
The greatest beneficiaries of these colonial manipulations in Africa are the French and the British. Between these two they controlled or control above 90% of these colonial creations. Out of the sixteen or so countries that came out of these colonial balkanization in West Africa, the British had or has five, including Nigeria, the most populated black country on earth, while the French has and still control the remaining nine or ten while the portuguese has about two.
This is the sad story of Africa and her peoples.
While the British at one end were perpetuating their indirect rule, the French at the other end had their colonials in a terrible strangle hold termed Assimilation Policy.
