Africa’s Westernized Elites And Their Pathetic Intellectual Enslavement

To do justice to this essay, I will use a lengthy quotation to lay the foundation of my arguments. I beg your indulgence.

“What the African elites lack most is the courage to use their “own reason.” This, despite how modern they like to think of themselves, has actually kept them in an age of pre-modernity. The African governing class is in its great majority constituted by marionettes; and string-puppets, we know, cannot think for themselves. They dance to the rhythm of whoever pulls the strings. So do most African elites, dancing to perfection at the pull of the strings. Perfection is the operative word, for indeed, the marionette African elites are pathological perfectionists. It would have been affirmative that the elites be perfectionist to the cause of nationhood, that they be devoted to safeguarding national dignity. Instead, they are pathological perfectionists; that is, they have misidentified the measure of perfection to be whiteness just as they have mistaken the measure of imperfection to be blackness.

Because of this misidentification the black elites run compulsively - as true as compulsion is another symptom of neurosis - from themselves toward accumulation of the symbols of whiteness in the hope of tending maximally toward whiteness. In so doing, they actually impoverish their living environment while enriching the living environment of the Occident. It is their proximity to the center of oppression that makes the black elites neurotic subjects. Black in the thick of exclusive whiteness, placed at the heart of white paradise yet constantly indexed as a devil burning of all the fires of heathen, the black man, and mostly the black African man, has been ruminating his desire for vraisemblabilisation, for imitation, for sameness, for too long to act rationally. Fanon’s warning that the national elites be kept in check for there to be any hope of safeguarding national consciousness against the perils of sabotage is well indicated. The elites, who are closer to the center of oppression, are the most affected; they are the most alienated. For the black estranged from himself through colonial experience, first, and later, in a more disguised way, in a more subtle way, through the promises of globalization, whiteness constitutes the lack of desire. The black’s every desire is desire for whiteness, white aesthetics, white economy, white politics, white culture, white environment. To wit, President Wade of Senegal has just shed $175 million to acquire President Sarkozy’s used airplane so he can fly high above the miseries of Senegal and, in the company of his milky companion, crow to have arrived at the level surface of the Great White Man. Sarkozy knows of this black ego’s epidermal malaise, and so he uses it to his advantage, making the black elites modern slaves in shining shoes and three-piece suits. For Africa to develop, the black elites will have to learn to think by themselves. To the African elites I say: Have the courage to use your own judgments." - M. Frindéthié, Black Leaders, White Master.

We do not gloat, but we can’t fail to mention that Hurricane Trump has finally revealed a dark shadow that for long loomed over African academia and media, an unbelievable self-inflicted intellectual servitude that keeps the continent tethered to the ideological illusions of the West. For reasons that are difficult to fathom, most African opinion leaders find it impossible to wean themselves of the hero-worshipping of the historical oppressors of their race. Is that what Psychologists call Cognitive dissonance, or will Stockholm Syndrome do?

We have spent the past four decades trying to expose how, across the universities, think tanks, and newsrooms of Africa, so-called scholars and journalists in Africa waste their lives regurgitating the fraudulent disciplines of Western humanities, parroting theories designed to justify Western domination rather than to advance human understanding, foster solidarity or help to build cohesive and progressive societies. Rather than be castigated, these fraudsters are celebrated. They are given awards and feted by Western NGOs and visas to mingle with their curators in the Western world. Unfortunately, they control all the levers of power in Africa. You should stop wondering why Africa appears frozen in a time warp. Neither the disarticulate schizophrenic economic nor the political system the colonialists imposed and their heirs continue to preach has helped the continent to join the rest of humanity in building its self-afforming civilization.

Nowhere is this intellectual con game more evident than in “political science,” a discipline whose very name is a fraud.

In the past two weeks, Donald Trump, a convicted felon, having bulldozed his way back to power, has ruled by executive fiat, bypassing both Congress and the so-called checks and balances of the U.S. Constitution. His actions have exposed what should have been evident to any serious observer: American democracy is a carefully maintained illusion. This spectacle obscures the naked exercise of raw power by Oligarchic Plutocrats. We witnessed this during the inauguration of Mr. Trump, where he was surrounded by his billionaire sponsors rather than by political leaders.

Yet, across Africa, we still find university professors wasting precious time teaching Political Science ( with BS such as “American Democratic Theory,” “Western Press Freedom,” etc.) as if it were a real science rather than the ideological cover for Western imperial hegemony that it is.

As argued in this blog, it is time for Africa’s intellectuals to break free from this shameful, uncritical mimicry cycle. Rather than investing money, time, and efforts in intellectual fads from Western universities, Africa should learn from nations like Iran, China, and Russia - civilizations that have rejected the imposed narratives of the West, connected with their past, and are forging their own independent intellectual, economic and political traditions.

We in Africa have no choice but to retrace our steps back to our roots if we ever want anyone to take us seriously. As Frantz Fanon warned: No one considers his imitator an equal.

To expose the fraudulence of political science, we must begin by defining what real science is. By most definitions, science is the systematic study of the natural world through observation, experimentation, and formulation of laws or theories that can be tested and falsified. Scientific fields like physics, chemistry, and biology meet this criterion because they rely on empirical methods to establish universally applicable principles that can be independently tested.

Political science, on the other hand, meets none of these criteria. PolSci does not discover any universal law. It merely interprets social behavior through jaundiced ideological lenses. Unlike chemistry, which can predict how two substances will react, political science cannot predict with certainty how human beings will act under similar conditions. More damningly, the field is plagued by ideological biases - what is considered “democracy” in one era becomes “authoritarianism” in another, depending on Western political interests. Professors cloaked their version of nonsense in high-falutin big words.

We can regard political science the same way that Thomas Paine regarded theology: “The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.” - Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

Let’s take the U.S. electoral system as an example. Western political scientists champion it as a model of democracy, yet it is a system where people do not get to elect their President directly. The popular vote does not necessarily determine the presidency; a nebulous Electoral College selects him. Of course, the ideological propagandists who masquerade as Professors of politics will pretend not to notice corporate money's role in electing the one they choose to call the Most Powerful Person on Earth. Anything American must necessarily be the “most.”

If political science were indeed a science, its practitioners would acknowledge these flaws rather than obfuscate them behind grandiose words and theories.

Yet, despite these glaring contradictions, African universities continue to teach political science as though it were a serious academic discipline. Worse still, the graduates of these programs then go on to staff Africa’s bureaucracies, perpetuating Western political doctrines that have failed even in their countries of origin. And we pretend not to understand why Africa lags in all human achievements and progress indices.

The question that we need to ask ourselves is why Africa remains intellectually enslaved to such fraudulent colonial knowledge systems. Why did we fail to do what the Chinese and the Iranians did after they regained independence: they considered the Western imposition as a terrible interregnum in their long years of history. Tragically, our colonization, which lasted less than a century, led to our forgetting that we were a people with a long history of nation and empire-building before the Europeans interrupted our natural progression. The frauds who are in charge of our education continue to play their assigned roles as heirs of colonialism, the silly, dim-witted comprador of globalism.

Yet, African political scientists continue to revere the American system, prescribing its flawed model as the path to stability and development for Africa. They are blind to the reality that democracy, as practiced in the West, is little more than a theatrical performance designed to legitimize elite rule—a plutocracy that masquerades as a democracy. Just look at the enormous power an unelected billionaire like Elon Must wields in Trump’s administration.

And what of the Western media, that supposed self-referencing and self-worshipping beacon of objectivity? The recent revelations that USAID has been financing outlets like Politico should have been the final nail in the coffin of their credibility. The BBC and CNN occasionally run to town with “scoops” from Politico. Yet, African journalists - trained in the same institutions that mass-produce America’s obedient stenographers - continue to genuflect before the altar of Western journalistic “integrity.” Many Africans swear by these Western media. They hanker after awards doled out by these agencies of Western Imperialism and White Supremacy.

As Slavyangrad reported, “The CIA's USAID funded more than 6,200 journalists from 707 media outlets and 279 "media" non-profit non-governmental organizations, including 90% of Ukraine's media!

How can an outlet that receives direct funding from the U.S. government claim to scrutinize that same government objectively? The hypocrisy is staggering, yet Africa’s media elites remain in thrall to Western journalistic standards, mimicking their reporting styles, parroting their jaundiced narratives, and presenting them as gospel truths.

This dependence on Western media by African journalists is not just intellectual laziness - it is a form of ideological warfare. By framing world events through a Western lens, African journalists unwittingly serve as mouthpieces for Western interests. They propagate narratives that serve Western geopolitical goals, from the demonization of China and Russia to the promotion of Western-backed “civil society” movements designed to destabilize African governments. Revelations from dismantling USAID show how the agency became weaponized for Uncle Sam’s crusades for regime change.

For example, African journalists can borrow a leaf from Iran, which has built an academic and political ecosystem deeply rooted in its Islamic and Persian heritage. Rather than continue insulting the intelligence of their compatriots, African intellectuals can emulate their Chinese scholars, who have revitalized Confucian thought, integrating it into a modern governance model that has propelled China’s rise. Despite Western sanctions and isolation, Russia has cultivated a robust intellectual class that prioritizes national interests over Western validation.

Africa must follow suit. Instead of wasting time studying Western political theories that do not work even in the West, African scholars should research governance models rooted in African history and traditions. Instead of parroting Western media narratives, African journalists should uncover and amplify stories that reflect Africa’s true interests.

Africans should not regard this as merely an academic concern - it is a matter of our survival as a race. A continent that remains intellectually dependent on its former colonizers will never achieve true sovereignty. Africa’s scholars, journalists, and intellectuals must decide whether they will continue to be mere extensions of Western thought or rise to the challenge of building a truly independent African intellectual and political order that will help to create the African Renaissance.

The choice is clear. The time for mimicking the West is over. The time for African self-determination and self-affirmation has come.

©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀‌làfẹ̀

(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)

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