By Chebet
Published February 16, 2023
The African Civilization: Utamaduni wa Kiafrika is a 234-page book written by Kihumbu Thairu, a professor at the University of Nairobi. The book was first published in 1975 and has been reprinted twice since then. Its title captures the essence of the book which goes into length to explain the attitudes that have been currently adopted by Africans towards our utamaduni and sinks into the roots of the myths held so dearly by the “modern” African. It shows how the African Civilization should be truly depicted from our own point of view.The cover page is composed of the map of Africa in the background with 3 buildings that celebrate African traditional architecture, the pyramid being one of them, and layered on top are 3 spears that are in motion upwards. The three primary colours (red, blue and yellow) have been employed with white to blend them in.
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The book tackles issues that have plagued the African post colonization and devotes itself to the demystification of myths currently held by the African people about themselves and their culture. It begins by diving into the matter of conditioning describing how for colonization to be successful mass conditioning of the African people was a necessity. The christian religion was used as a weapon to alienate the African people from their own religion. Undermining the then-African religious systems and labelling them evil, it succeeded in convincing most of the Africans of a new “improved” god who was better. This conditioning was a preamble to colonization which was the main agenda. You disconnect a people from their divine source, you conquer them.
The book then winds on to talk about beauty and how the African person has been convinced that they are not beautiful. Professor Thairu points out that even though African people’s skins consist of melanin expressed in amazing shades of brown and black, they have all been labelled black while on the other hand, white people have been labelled white yet in real life, their skin expresses itself in a pale shade of pink. He goes on and explains this as a well-crafted propaganda. The colour black has been wrongly accused of representing all that’s evil and vile while white represents all that’s pure and divine. This automatically condemns the black man to an unfair position of being assumed naturally evil and dirty. He even goes further and points out the different features that make the African body beautiful and unique as opposed to popular belief introduced through conditioning and lots of deception. When the white man first came to Africa, the Africans’ first reaction to his strange looks was ridicule and mockery, they hollered around him bursting into laughter. This made the white man angry and as revenge calculated a clever way of convincing the bĺacks that in fact their features are more appealing and their skin more beautiful. Years down the line, African children are now bleaching their skin to look paler, the plan worked!
The book continues to describe more traditional knowledge systems breaking them down into customs, naming, medicine, and education. It also brings into our awareness modern problems like the much-discussed issue of population explosion. Professor Thairu says that the narrative of overpopulation in Africa is false and the population control measures are ways of making sure the Africans do not dominate the world through numbers. Through population control, the population of young people who make up most of the workforce in a country is greatly reduced crippling the country’s economy. For a nation to prosper, an adequate amount of young people is necessary, China was presented as a case showing there is more strength in numbers. He also talked about countries in Europe where they had smaller populations of young people and had to welcome more strangers to fill the gap in the workforce, this would be Africa’s finality if they continued to preach on population control.
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Just before concluding, Professor Thairu first gives all Africans hope by introducing a chapter called “Towards re-orientation and Afrocentricity” Here, he discusses how to move on from this current trance African people are in and embrace their highest selves, their utamaduni . Beginning with cultural deconditioning, he explains the importance of teaching children their African languages and making them familiar with their culture. Also telling children about the greatness of Africa and giving them an African version of history without omission of information is a great tool in deconditioning. Promoting the Swahili language as a language to be used by all of Africa was also encouraged to bring unity and understanding.
A different stance has to be taken with regard to religion in Africa. The previous mindset of demonising the African religious systems has to be examined and given a second thought. It’s time for Africans to go back to their gods who spoke their language. Professor says that all the different African religious systems are essentially one system with people referring to God in their different languages hence the many different names. He then brings up the issue of income apartheid and how it has taken hold since after independence. Criticizing capitalism and all the other isms, he suggests a new method of controlling the country’s economy that limits the amount of wealth a person might acquire. He elaborates even further explaining how it would work in making sure there’s no huge economic gap between people causing there to exist a new barrier for discrimination. He condemns the modern African person’s obsession with amassing large amounts of wealth and suggests equality with no greed.
“When Africans start the culture-technological revolution, the world will at first mock and ridicule us(…) so as to discourage us but when we accomplish the revolution we shall not need to tell the world what we really are “, this quote adequately concludes the book with the hope and light of the future of African people revealing its potential to be great. More people are urged to join in the revolution and make the dream of ancestors come to life.
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I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and getting drawn into the professor’s stark rawness in his communication. He tells everything like it is and isn’t afraid to speak of issues that would be considered taboo by brainwashed Africans. He serves the white propagandists the same level of pettiness they express in their own ideas and shows just how ridiculous the claims are. I would therefore recommend this book to all the youth of Africa who are looking forward to liberating themselves from the shackles of conditioning and propaganda. Maybe, just one of the most relevant books of our times.