ARE AFRICANS STILL ANIMALS?

 

Africans have a worldview about the cosmos embodied in their culture and stored in their heart, soul, and mind.

It does not matter what the geographic location of an African is situated. Even those who left Africa continent centuries ago still transfer this culture from generation to generation.

For the past Nine years, I work as a Chaplain for Africans in Then Netherlands. I notice that

Africans in the diaspora suffer unnecessary health and psychological pain which can be easily treated with their cultural approach. I was made to understand that 80% of their problem are culture-related issues. They need a culturally sensitive approach to the treatment.

 

Though African culture has suffered violence in an attempt to uproot it since its encounter with the western world in Africa. In the diaspora, it still emerges in different forms. Those who became Christians took it into Christianity in many forms including the black gospel. Those who remain in Africa maintain the culture and express it in religious belief. Though religious beliefs were also maintained both in Africa and those Africans were taken out of Africa for slavery and other reasons to other continents. They took some of the African cultures with them. In different countries, it is called by different names.

In Haiti is called Voodoo.

In Brazil, it is called by many different names like Candomblé and Umbanda.

In Suriname it is called Winti.

Cuba calls it Santerían.

New Orleans has Voodoo-Catholicism because they merged their religion with the Catholic church.

The rest of the names are Juju, Hoodoo, and so on. They are therefore many different forms of cultural, spiritual, and ritual expression of African Religion in the Western world.

In the last year 2021 and this year 2022, I endeavored to give African roots education on spiritual, psychological, and mental well-being. I included the understanding of mental, psychological, and spiritual disorders due to the rejection of African Religions (AR) such as Voodoo and Hoodoo, Winti and Juju, and Umbanda, and so on religions, traditions, rituals, and culture of the participants. This was meant to break the taboo and make it discussable.  This area of mental problems is not known to mental health counselors. While this culture is responsible for about 80% of mental health problems that arise in the target group of this culture. The health hazard this rejection and lack of understanding of this religion creates on Africans are too much to neglect.

 

Presently it is well known that these migrants’ roots in the NETHERLAND are having health hazards that medical professionals cannot and could not treat. Especially when it comes to psychological and mental and spiritual issues which in turn affect the physical body. The reason they could not be helped is the lack of recognition of their culture. The situation of their health and the application of culturally sensitive care. The need for recognition of their religion and culture by medical professionals is basic for their health and well-being. The policymaker keeps on the complot theory. The effect is a health hazard among these migrants.

Africans are human animals

 

Hegel’s complot theory

The renowned German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel nailed a complot theory that Africans should not have religion because they are yet to evolve into human beings. He claimed that animals do not have religion. This is because animals do not possess souls. Because Africans are examples of human animals, they should not have religion. Like animals do not have history and so on, Africans do not have history. This influential philosopher including all his predecessors and their successors like Charles Darwin’s evolution theory archived to maintain this theory.   

I think these philosophers were running mental diarrhea which people find elegant. Such mental diarrhea was consumed as truth and applied. We can confirm that it is mental diarrhea. There is no ground whatsoever to term a human being the way Hegel did to Africans.

 

The complot theory of Western philosophers and theologians finds its way into academic formations and all forms of dealing with Africans. They developed the doctrine and academics applied it and educate the psyche of the society. Complot’s theory of reducing Africans as an example of human animals was elegant. For centuries this led to all forms of inhuman treatment toward Africans. They are treated like animals in all forms of their life.

This is how Africans were deprived of their culture including religion and identity through complot theory. They are not human beings and therefore should not have religion. Only human beings have religion.

They do not have rituals or dreams or language and surely no spirituality which involves religion. The effect is that they have to be colonized, enslaved, and so on in other to have culture including religion and language, and rituals. Their names are deprived, and they should take names of human beings meaning western names. Their local names were not accepted because it will keep the animals. They should not be proud of their local names. Their identity is thereby deprived.

I wish this is a past issue. But the reality and its effect are what Africans are suffering day to day in society. I am prompted to write this because of what I see daily at my work.

 

Presently in the Netherlands Africans are deprived of opportunities for good health because they do not have a culture.

Culture comprises four parts namely Spirituality which can be called religion.

Language and words are communication parts of a culture.

Rituals are part of a culture and dreams. These four aspects make a culture.

 

When a human being is reduced to animals, there is the freedom to commit genocide. History shows us that it never fails.  It is only a question of time and who will use it as a weapon.

The whole image about Africans is a complot theory thinking.

 

It looks like the complot theory is no more elegant in society. We have seen journalists and artists killed on the street in the presence of people. He was slaughtered as an animal as he was called an animal. We have seen journalists termed as rats. We have seen group of people termed cockroaches and we are witnessing people called cold-blooded and so on. All over the globe, we have witnessed crimes against humanity took place and taking place because people are categorized as animals.  It makes it easy to kill because it takes away the humanity which we share together.

What goes around comes around. When a part of a human being is reduced to the animal because of convenience’s sake. In the long run, all human beings are reduced to animals. The life of those reduced to animals is in danger. The same applied to the life of human beings. As an African I am multicultural. I was born and brought up in a culture comprising the four elements of culture. I am colonized and live in another culture with its four elements. Like many other African roots, both cultures are maintained in me.

Presently in the Netherlands, my African culture is still taboo. Something that cannot be spoken about outside the African community.

 

I had from 2015 till the present, years of conversation with rectors of universities and other institutions in the Netherlands. I have spoken with professors of departments, psychiatrists, psychologists, spiritual care, and health specialists in the hospital. Home practitioners in different big cities. Policymakers on health institutions. Health institutions like GGZ and GGD. I have discussed this with health union organizations. I did not leave churches and pastors out including fellow spiritual caregivers of different religions in my lobby for change on this complot theory against African culture and religion. African Religion is not accepted religion with more than 1 billion people. Most health professional runs away when the topic is mentioned. The academics close the doors and policymakers do not want to talk about it. The consequences are that the taboo costs the lives of these migrant people in the Netherlands. Deaths that can be prevented.

 

Can Africa have her culture?

 

My request is whether can Africans be accepted as human beings and thereby their culture and religion. Now they have fulfilled all the requirements of having a western name and keeping an African first name out of the way. Now the majority are multi-religious and cultural including being Christian and having Christian names. Some are Muslims and take Muslim names and so on. They are multi-culture too and have learned the culture and language. Can African culture be lifted out of taboo?  The Complot theory that some human beings are animals should be forbidden starting with those they started with namely Africans.

 

Can Africans have their culture back?  African culture and worldview are necessary for part of their health and well-being. 

This will remove the taboos and bring them out of the complot theory of Hegel and the academics. Maybe their children and people with African roots can take care of their health and well-being in the Netherlands. Complot theory is one and for all. Maybe Africans who are ashamed and even hated their culture including religion might learn to know that it is their inheritance and they have to learn how to live with it.

 

Winti has connotations of evil in Surinam and Dutch society today because of its origins namely African culture and religion.

Voodoo is forever termed evil because the Haitians defeated the French in the war to be the first republic nation in the world even before France become a republic. But it was assumed that the Haitians used Voodoo to defeat modern and civilized France. The punishment for using such evil power is to pay compensation to France which keeps the nation to be one of the poorest in the world. African culture remains taboo. Because of it, too many Africans are ashamed to talk about it. Some courageous African women came together to break this taboo. They have seen the danger it possesses for their children. They are conscious that they are transferring the same fear and taboo to their children. That is why they want this taboo broken.