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0. INTRODUCTION
Is it suitable to talk about African consciousness? If yes, which are the perimeters for our subject to remain understandable and comprehensible? If not, why do we refuse a continent to become personified? Could personifying the African continent help towards understanding it? Would personifying the continent help towards better understanding some common behaviour, some common reluctance, heaviness and slowness vis-à-vis our problems? Is it not true that certain awareness about our present could determine the coming about of our destiny?
After having passed through the same experience we are invited to fashion a common behaviour and a common policy regarding vital issues. However, the way of handling problems, difficult situations and of coming to new perspectives is tightly linked up with the consciousness or the awareness of difficulties encountered, problems faced and challenges to solve. And we dare say that sub-Saharan Africa is sharing, mutatis mutandis, the same difficulties, problems, and challenges as anywhere else.
We want to personify Africa. We also want to show the existing cornerstone and the missing cement for the construction of that African awareness called African Consciousness. For this presentation we will follow three steps: Africa as Id, Africa as Ego and Africa as Superego.
1. AFRICA’S ID
The African Id is its instinct and impulses. It is that force of survival in us, which nobody can control and contain. It is that savagery in each of us that tries to save its own life by excluding others. The African Id is our instinct to protect and to defend our egoism, our selfish security. The Id is so self-centered and self-interested that it does not give room to others to be happy. African Id is exclusive, totally centered on the individual, his clan or tribe. Related to capitalism, it is very egoistic and does not worry about others’ situations. Our Id has exteriorized itself in tribalism, nepotism, and parasitism… that are some of the causes of our delay.
2. AFRICA’S SUPEREGO
The African Superego is whatever we have learned from society. It is the part of the African mind that contains a set of moral rules. It includes all the prohibitions as well as all the ideals, which the society has taught us. Its role is to awake us about cautions of society. But it also has as role to present to us the important values that are important and necessary for our harmonious growth and that of the society. The African superego has a very big weight coming from ancestors’ teachings and wisdom. At the same time it entails also the entire westernized luggage left by colonization and promoted by the media.
3. AFRICAN EGO OR CONSCIOUSNESS.
Although our psyche has three components, the Id, Superego and Ego, it is the latter one that is harmonizing and regulating the two others. Whatever we may do becomes really ours only if it is harmonized by our Ego. A true mature and responsible action has to be conscious. Let it be said that being conscious does not mean being 100% aware of all the consequences. The African Ego is the way Africans commonly perceive themselves in relation to others and the way they act to raise self-esteem and esteem coming from others. We have to take in that African Ego is tightly related to western Ego, which has under-evaluated and under-estimated Africans.
To be conscious is to be aware of the consequences of one’s actions and to be able to assume the consequences. To be conscious is to be aware of; it is to be sensible, reasonable. To be conscious is to be intentional, to do something on purpose. It is to be deliberate, which means to be careful and unhurried. To be conscious is to be cognizant, that is to have knowledge of the issue and to acknowledge a concern. It is also to be wide-awake about what is happening.
If to be conscious is so wide and extensive, what then does African Consciousness amount to if it is meant to become the key and condition for Africa’s Renaissance? “African” is not a racial category. African-ness is not on the first place about race, color, and gender. African can easily mean oppressed communities, oppressed minorities.
African consciousness is the knowledge that Blacks and Africans have undergone a very difficult history, a very tough history, a history of slavery and denial of elementary rights, a history of deliberate sufferings from the West, a story which has involved also conspiracy from its own children. That story is a story of denial of elementary rights that has led Africans to see their destiny running completely out of their own hands.
African Consciousness is altogether being aware, sensible, deliberate, cognizant, and reasonable about our past, and to be determined to find reasonable answers and solutions to our future destiny. African Consciousness (Africa’s Ego) is deliberate determination to make a symbiosis of our Id and Superego for a better African society and to help all other oppressed minorities and communities to get out of their sufferings and human rights denial. African Consciousness is dynamic. It is a refusal to be used as tools and means by others. It is a determination to work for human dignity and African Renaissance.
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Yambwa, Nziya Jean-Pierre
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Comments
Renaissance in Africa possible Tony | May 20th, 2005
Renaissance is possible. The African problem lies in poor leadership, which has brought with it lack of cultural identity especially among the youth due to the importation of low quality media, 'lutocracy', among many other ills. Lets espouse on the guidelines of the ideology, give examples to the emerging generation by creating opportunities for good leadership to reign. The rest will be smooth sailing. Indians, Chinese, Japanese, etc are really proud of their culture and would not mind shrubbing while speaking or sharing their culture with others. Back in Africamany would rather want to be seen as German speaking, French speaking, English speaking etc at the expense of the highly noble African cultural identities. Such mentality should be deconstructed and pride built in the African cultural identities.
Towards Understanding Colonialism and the African Societies Esnaen M. Catong | Sep 21st, 2005
I think, the role of the colonial powers should be considered in understanding the conditions of African nations. The "divide and rule strategies" of those that shaped Afican communities should be clearly understood and not put the blame on the victims.
If the African leaders are indeed sincere in solving the centuries-old problems in their societies, they should focus on education and viable long term programs to empower their constituents without sacrificing their cultures, traditions, and ways of life. And understanding their history as a people is a step towards that direction. Reflections should follow...
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