Africans are not failed versions of Europeans

Once upon a time, White colonialists came to these lands and convinced the natives that local norms, values, and cultures were inherently inferior if not evil. Ashamed of their ways, the natives embarked on a fool’s errand to imitate their White masters. But they soon realised that it’s impossible to escape from what you are.
With their roots cut off, yet unable to perfectly emulate their masters, the natives found themselves lost in no man’s land. As they wandered, they got drunk on the idea that certain groups are inherently and irrevocably inferior to others. However, such thinking is dangerous. Some groups, for instance, have used it to justify and commit genocide while others have used it to wage psychological warfare.

Now, the effects of psychological warfare can be enduring and just as crippling as physical harm. Just look at the impact of our self-hate and self-doubt. Journalist Timothy Kalyegira, for example, argues that without submitting to Whites, Black people are doomed. Ostensibly, whatever Whites do is a gold-standard, and Blacks should aspire to it without exception. This argument, however, ignores the fact that the Western way of doing things is just a way, not the way.

Kalyegira and his ilk need to appreciate that we are our own people, trying to distinguish ourselves. When necessary, we pick ideas from other peoples, but we domesticate them to suit local realities.
When we speak English, for example, we accord it Ugandan characteristics. Why? Because native dialects inescapably influence how people speak. That is why the urbanites of Kenya, Uganda, and Nigeria all have different accents. We can’t escape this; it is a result of our histories. Kalyegira’s glorification of English, and not Portuguese, is itself a result of history. (Britain, not Portugal colonised us)
Kalyegira should, therefore, stop pestering Ugandans to adopt his preferred variety of English as the gold-standard.

In any case, England, whence English came, has a variety of regional accents (and dialects) too. They range from the familiar Received Pronunciation accent of upscale London to less comprehensible ones like the Scouse accent of Liverpool. What crime, then, are Ugandans committing by having regional variation in English accents?
If what pains Kalyegira is our current economic backwardness, he should know that accent is not the decisive driver of economic transformation.
Besides, our primary focus, when communicating, should be content and clarity. Prioritising substance over form will help us gain a command of issues, which is ultimately more beneficial to our mother-land.

The idea that one community is a diluted version of another is simply misguided. Let’s take our distant cousins, the chimpanzees as an example. Because we share a common ancestor, we have several similarities with chimps. But, we cannot base on those similarities (or our shared history) to say that chimpanzees are attempting to become humans but are failing. Chimps are a distinct group of beings, walking their own path.
Likewise, Africans have similarities and a shared history with other world peoples. Some of them, for example, Europeans, are more advanced in specific aspects. That, however, does not mean that African is a lower step on the evolutionary journey to becoming European. We are our own people, walking our path of progress. We are not less!
Mr Kibudde is a sociopolitical thinker
[email protected] Twitter: @kkaboggoza