Discussion of colonialism

“Africa is not simple – people want to simplify it”

The possession of power is very important when wanting to tell a story. Usually the person, who wins a war, colonizes another country or is superior in general in terms of their development, economic stability and military power is the one who gets to write the story. It’s always written from the winner’s perspective and its single story of a culture, country or situation can be very objective and can usually represent a very negative or over exaggerated description which is what the people who are not from that country or region will grow up to learn. Similarly in Africa, people want to simplify it in the way where they just get the single story which leads to numerous stereotypes and assumptions of a whole entire region with the reader having limited knowledge of what it’s really like. These assumptions rob people of dignity and it’s unfair for the culture and the lives of people to be represented by a single story. There are so many sides and perspectives from which to look at Africa with and it has to be balanced in the way from how we are looking at it, if it’s not then it devalues the people and their culture. “Show people as one thing, and only one thing, and that’s what they will become”. Africa it’s really complex and just describing the whole region as one even though it is made of large number of different culture and traditions doesn’t give them justice. The simplification of the whole continent with only one story can, and was used to justify their actions towards colonizing other places and forcing them to adapt to the colonizer’s way of living and traditions without taking into account their already existing civic order in a framework of tradition, political understanding and faith.