AFRICANS AND VICTIMHOOD

There is a kind of woman who relishes describing the physical and other wounds her partner or spouse has inflicted on her. “He beat me so badly, I had to have six stitches in my cheek”, she says, buying things for her man's dinner. However atrocious the treatment she receives, she goes back.

I think many of the women who stay in abusive relationships enjoy it.

They like being victims.

But they are not the only ones. Have you not met the kind of African who likes to detail the things that are wrong with our continent, how we have been raped and plundered over centuries, the sort of African who has all the details (real and imagined) of what the White man did and did not do, and who enjoys the telling? Have you not met them?

They also like being victims.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day, and I was at pains to explain to him just what it is that I meant. I’d like to make the point here.

The problem is not that I disagree with people who wish the history of our suffering to be remembered. The problem is the purpose for which it is remembered. Does one talk of the slave trade or the brutality of the Belgians in the Congo only to wallow in a sense of being hard done by?

Do we want pity, or do we want justice?

Pity can tug at people’s heartstrings and cause them to feel ashamed. But eventually, their instinct for self-preservation kicks in, and they become inured to your pleas. Who likes the relative who comes begging for money, citing a leg injury he had 5 years ago? Who does not find a friend’s oft-repeated misfortune trying after a while? I cannot count the number of times I have felt like saying to someone: yes yes yes yes! I know you have had a tough time. NOW GET OUT!

Moreover, if you continually cast yourself as a victim, you will be identified solely as such after a while. There are some people who enjoy tormenting others. They are called bullies. Bullies love victims.

We must also remember that people tend to feel contempt for the people they exploit or lie to. It is partly because it is difficult to respect someone whom you are able to cheat. But it is also because one can sometimes only justify maltreating people if one can somehow think that the people deserve it. That is why exploited or marginalised people are often described as dirty, lazy, criminal, uncivilised, stupid and all those other beautiful epithets.

This may be the blinkered view of one who has no real experience of acute suffering, but I think a lack of dignity in adversity does not help our case. It causes us to lose credibility.

I am not saying that noble abnegation and a quite acceptance of suffering are the right attitude. I do not aspire to sainthood, especially on behalf of other people. But we need to get out of this whining routine.

Things were done to us, true. We should remember them so that 1), we can recognise and fight them if any attempt is made to repeat them, 2) we will know why we are the world’s unwashed armpit, and 3) we can assess honestly where we went wrong. Yes, we did do wrong. Though we did not invite the evils, and our own faults do not necessarily justify the evils being committed, our inability to counter these evils is also based on failures on our part. Did our chiefs not sell rivals and prisoners of war into slavery? Did we ourselves not own slaves? Do we not treat our women in much the same way as more powerful nations treat us?

We should catalogue our exploitation, but we should not enjoy our suffering. We should stop whining and act. To use the battered woman analogy again, instead of enjoying the attention you get by telling your entourage how badly your husband beat you last week, fight him with what you have. Tell him that you will attack him in his sleep when he is defenceless. Or remind him that you do the cooking, and that the food of enemies can be tampered with.

If you cannot earn respect, earn fear. It will keep you safe.

Comments

[Rista]

Great post, I am in total agreement with you. And you are so right about the food... know a woman who threatened her husband thus, so he resorted to the most obvious non-physical method of abuse.

[Patrick Gathara]

I am in total agreement with your thoughts. Africans are the victims of their own lack of self-respect. We are Third-Worlders because we think like Third-Worlders. As I argued on my blog some months ago, I think we perpetuate the image of poverty besause we feel the need to blame others for our misfortune in order to avoid taking responsibility for it.

[sokari]

Whilst I agree with your point on "Africa and victimhood" especially constantly putting the blame of failures on colonialism or Mr White man as if we oursleves have played no part in our own history and our leaders have not themselves repeatedly failed us - I was discussing this very topic this morning with a taxi driver here in Johannesburg - he asked me "why when our leaders fail us do we keep electing the same people" "What is wrong with us that we accept so much exploitation from our own leaders and do nothing" "Why should a man like Jacob Zuma be so popular that he might be the next President of SA?" Hard questions to answer and we talked for a good 40 minutes on the subject but came to know real conclusion - I hope we continue another day.

However I find it hard to agree with your analogy of battered women who return to their partners repeatedly and who even talk about their beatings. There is no physical abuse that takes place without psychologial abuse and there are many reasons why women stay in violent relationships - fear, lack of support, lack of the means to financially survive on their own, being ostracised from their communities, fear of being on their own, lack of confidence, fear of loosing children and so many more reasons. Battered women face many different pressures but in my experience each woman comes to the decision to say NO MORE in her own time. Sometimes talking about it is a way of relieving oneself of the pain the woman may be feeling.

I hear what you are saying as I have listened to women who complain about violence but appear to do nothing and you get tired of hearing it and begin to ask yourself what is wrong with this woman - you try to help but in the end women have to reach the point through their own actions that they can leave. I dont know all the answers or reasons but I dont feel comfortable making judgements about how women respond in these kind of violent situations.

[Girl next door]

Great post! It's true that we tend to get caught up in the victimhood phase and neglect to move on the action phase. I think part of the reason is that people feel powerless. The moment we, the masses, realize our collective power, we'll be demanding radical change and a revolution.

[fndng]

The Jews of NY, mostly European immigrants have a certain word "kvetch" that means to habitually and incessantly complain. They believe that they are a tribe of kvetchers, but that has not stopped them from becoming a tribe of overachievers. Why is it that they make sure nobody forgets about the holocaust (call it victimhood if you wish), but at the same time they are on the A list of professionals in almost every country? What is their angle? Hey, Ekosso that would be an interesting topic too. We have something to learn here.

[gats]

Victim mentality is the easy way of not taking the blame for one failures. African leaders and people hope to extort Europeans by making them feel guilty and at the same time not to do the hard work of overcoming th huge difficulties facing us. As a victim you sit and cry and other take pity. We also read history in a biased way we fail to read the history where African brought misery to other Africans and other peoples. The great African empire of the past conqured weak nations and enslaved them. That was the name of the game then. So we have to understand that had we had the opportunity to have the technology that made Europeans colonize us that we may not have been kinder to them.

Japan and Germany were forced to apologize their misdeeds and payback because they lost. Eurpopeans never lost the war on colonization they just changed the terms from direct to indirect domination. So little chance of getting an apology and compensation for slavery and colonization. Only when we can fully become independent self sufficient and thus a threat will the former master feel the pressure to offer apologies (we will not need the apology then since we will not be victims).

Jews get away with being victims because they are strategic working on two fronts. At the same time crying on one hand but also working hard to get to the key positions in western society through single minded intellectual pursuit. They dominate intellectual world so they can frame world debate. It also helps that they are the same tribe as Jesus so Christians feel very guilt of watching the tribe of Jesus being massacared and doing nothing (Jews may not get the same sympathy in Asia)

Afrcians need to understand that they only pity they can evoke from victimhoood is that a beggar who sits at a certain street corner evicts. And what it gets us is paltry. We need to stand from where we feel stop being bitter and uderstand that we lost the last round but there are many more rounds to be fought. The next round is about mastering knowledge in the areas on infrmatics and biotechnology and unless we can understand how we shall fight this round we will have another generations of victims but without the benefit of recent colonialism to blame (I wonder what will be the blame).

[Té la mà Maria]

We have visited his blog-web and find it interesting, congratulations

There visits ours, the irreverent and iconoclast of the world,
is in Catalunya - Spain

Http: // telamamaria.blogspot.com

Thank you very much for the visit

Maria-Keaton

[Cafe]

Great Post. Great blog.

It's time we make Africa's voice audible in this harsh world.

[Mwangi - the Displaced African]

Until recently I never would have thought that we really derive pleasure from constantly playing victims but you are absolutely right.

When we play the victim we enjoy a number of benefits such as:
a) Attention from our friends and loved ones.
b) We absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our downfall or any problems that are currently taking place- all our problems become the fault of another.

I think posts such as yours which acknowledge this and try to counter it are a welcome novelty.