By Oswald Hanciles
There would NEVER be sustainable development in Africa if Africans don’t confront, diagnose, and, cure themselves of the chronic Slave Mentality Virus (SMV) that is embedded in their subconscious minds, and what their bureaucratic elite and political elite use in their conscious minds to be reckless predators on society, or, the leadership have generally coerced the masses to be apathetic masses;; a Slave Mentality that is so ubiquitous that it shows how virulent the disease is that the African leadership generally – with the exception of the likes of President Paul Kigame of Rwanda; military Head-of-State Ibrahim Troare of Burkina Faso – do not appear to see its overpoweringly suppressive force. In Sierra Leone, my land of birth in a country carved for us by conquering British colonialists, the President, my “Bonthe Brother”, Retired Brigadier Maada Bio , is severely afflicted with the Slave Mentality Virus (SMV ); he’s in good company, since nearly all of Africa’s presidents in 2025 have serious SMVs; still, there is a glimmer of hope that he would imbibe the antidote to his SMV being proferred by indigenous philosophers like Oswald Hanciles, and provide leadership for other African national leaders to emancipate themselves from Mental Slavery – so, we can sail on a replica of a slave ship used in the era of the Atlantic Slave Trade from evocatively-named FREETOWN…to Brazil for COP-30 in November, 2025, the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s now annual conference to focus humanity’s attention on the Climate Change Emergency…to stimulate freedom in the minds of not only Africans, but freedom in the minds of all humanity, especially the main culprits of man-made Climate Change, the people in the richest nations of the world who are today Slaves to Material Things, stubbornly ignoring incessantly strident cries of scientists as they accelerate humanity towards Climate Change Apocalypse, spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, getting global temperatures to begin to rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Let’s for now shift focus to the thread in BOOK PROJECT Whatsapp forum of January 28, 2024.
What is a “Book”?
” Ee sabi book O!” in the Krio language, the lingua franca of Sierra Leone, means a person has a lot of knowledge, likely, a person who has a bachelor’s, or a Master’s, or a doctorate degree, acquired from some university. Or, the person has studied in Western universities. Or, the person has worked in highly acclaimed Western institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, etc. Or, the person has been recognized by the white man for his or her intellectual brilliance. In that context, “to sabi book ” is largely to know and to rattle out thoughts written by the white man that Africans would imbibe in books in greater and greater volumes. That thinking of what it means to “sabi book”; to be considered “educated”, is, shamelessly, a perception of the African’s conquered mind; the African’s brainwashed mind.
“Book” is normally thought of as knowledge put together in many pages and binded together. That knowledge could range from human sexuality to nutrition to witchcraft to Geography to Environmentalism to astrophysics or nanotechnology – knowledge that could be desired by persons or groups in a society or deemed reprehensible by persons or groups in a society. What if that knowledge does not come in several pages in a typical book mode, but, come in one page, a poster, like have been posted by N’bompa-Turay? Does it have less value because it is 8 pages, not 500 pages bound together as a “book”?
What if that knowledge is not even recorded on paper, or, in modern electronic format, but is knowledge as stored and disseminated for thousands of years by word-of-mouth by elders in human history, especially within African societies… would that knowledge be deemed valuable? Apparently , to too many of brainwashed minds of Africans, the knowledge of our forefathers not put in a “book” is intrinsically less valuable, and the “book people” of modern Africa – those educated in the ways of the white man – have been more ruthless in devaluing and destroying such word-of-mouth knowledge than the white man did in six hundred years of the eras of the Atlantic Slave Trade, and, European colonization of Africa. That has been – is being – tragic.
I am the brain, and, was a cofounder, and, CEO, of the SAVE MY FUTURE CONSERVATION SOCIETY (SAMFU) in Liberia in 1987. SAMFU sired GREENLOVE magazine in 1989, with financing from the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-International and German Forestry Mission to Liberia. About 60% of GREENLOVE magazine published in 1989 was (is) in cartoon stories, trying to explain the urgency for the preservation and conservation of the tropical rainforests of Liberia. The cartoons were drawn by Liberian cartoon genius, Ronnie Siakor ; I wrote all the cartoon stories.
One of the cartoon stories in GREENLOVE magazine was titled “The Djuankadju of the Bassa of Liberia ” – the creation myth of one of the largest ethnic groups of Liberia.
The Djuankadju of the Bassa of Liberia in GREENLOVE magazine was a cartoon adaptation of the 600-page doctoral thesis of Rev. Father Dr. Robert Gbataie Tikpor, who was in 1989 the Chairman of the Board of Directors of SAMFU; and was also the Dean of the largest Catholic church in Liberia; and a former Principal of St. Paul’s Catholic Seminary in Gbarnga, Bong County, a pan-African Catholic university in Liberia. He was fearless; an outspoken critique of three successive presidents of Liberia who would rail against presidents on the Catholic radio, and tell them off to their faces – even the murderous first indigenous Liberian President of Liberia, Samuel Kanyan Doe, who governed Liberia between 1980 and 1990.
The Djuankadju of the Bassa tells about the creation myth of the Bassa people, and the cartoon story I wrote draws a parallel with the most famous creation story on earth, the Jewish creation story recorded in the Bible.
How many of you Africans here know of the indigenous religions of your own people, and their creation stories, before they were conquered by Christian Europeans or Islamic Arabs?
Often, I would chide United Kingdom-based Sierra Leonean, Mohamed Lamin Kargbo , to tell the world about his Limba traditional religion of Sierra Leone, as he would extol Islam as the best, the ultimate, religion on earth. I would say almost the same thing to another Limba man, Ambassador Dr Rev Momodu Conteh, who in his utterances would appear to put over his head the mythical halo of Jesus Christ as depicted in Christian paintings, as he would also crow about being an ECOWAS, and European Union (EU)-sanctioned ‘Peace Ambassador’. I throw my gauntlet to both men again. They have never picked it up because deep in their subconscious minds they know that the religions they publicly proclaim are an Orwellian Big Lie.
In 2013, when I was media adviser to former President Ernest Bai Koroma at State House, I was developing a video documentary (It was my idea which the former had President supported. The former President NEVER told me what to do in the six years – 2012 to 2018 – I only reported directly to him at State House) which I titled “Salone Prosperity”. (Check it out in YouTube). For the video documentary I had taken my camera crew into the ‘ Mende Church ‘; the ‘ Temne Church’; and the ‘ Limba Church ‘ in Freetown, Sierra Leone.
As I listened to those three indigenous ethnic groups of Sierra Leone singing so-called Christian songs in their indigenous languages, tears would well in my eyes, I would use all my Hatha Yoga mind discipline to suppress the sobs inside me from erupting openly. As I would close my eyes, I would be transported in time to hundreds of years ago before the Arabs and Europeans conquered our people, enslaved them…
Inside Christian churches, the choristers and congregations would not be singing Christian songs, but, traditional African songs to traditional African gods; ancestors. It’s only their still conquered minds that would prevent them from defiantly saying to the world that they harken to their roots, they tap into their souls. Alas, they need the gloss of Christianity.
I had similar emotions in Nigeria in 1992, as my organization, GREENLOVE Nigeria, was contracted by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)-United Kingdom, to produce and publish PANGOLIN magazine for the Cross River National Park Project (CRNPP); and in doing our research for the second edition of PANGOLIN magazine, we would be in villages in the Mbe Mountains of Cross River State in eastern Nigeria, and I would listen to people singing Christian songs inside churches in their indigenous languages.
We urgently and desperately need “book” in the sciences and technology, and, books on organization and management of modern societies of millions of people. Sadly, what book we have learned in those spheres, especially after the Independence Era of the 1960s in Africa, have been largely superficial; suicidally shallow. I recently watched a video on TikTok in which an African compared Africans with Indians, who, like Africans, were once colonized by an European power, Britain – but the Indians have learned the science and technology of their European conqueror, but, have prevented from pollution their own indigenous religions, and culture; for Africans, we have failed largely to learn the science and technology of the white man, but, rather, we have adopted wholesale the white man’s clothes and food and manners and mores.
What we are challenged to do here in this BOOK PROJECT Whatsapp forum is to ensure that we spur our society to drink deep from the reservoir of global knowledge, especially in the sciences and technology. We speedily need to catalyze our having well-equipped libraries and laboratories at all levels of our educational systems. But…at the same time, we need to hurriedly harness the knowledge of our people – in spirituality; in religions; in sociology; in utilitarian knowledge of the fauna and flora of the tropical rainforests especially – to write books that would be used at all levels of our educational systems; not like it has been for over a hundred years, a few African intellectuals writing esoteric books that would only be read by a few white people in Europe and America. We have to research speedily to write books from our indigenous knowledge, and use that to inspire young people, to prevent the chronic poisoning of their mindsets with Western knowledge; to prevent that fervent belief that all knowledge that emanates from the white man is inherently better than what is Negroid African.
In Sierra Leone, as our country was embroiled in one of the most nauseously brutal civil wars in modern human history (1991 to 2002), the modern military patterned on British mould, failed in its principal duty of defending the civilian populace in times of war. The people revived their traditional hunters, the Kamajors in the Southeast; the Donsos in Kono District; the Gbethis in the Northern Province; the Tamaborrohs in the Northeast…and fought off the capriciously murderous AFRC sobels and RUF rebels, keeping them at bay, especially after 1977. That should be a lesson to Sierra Leoneans that when the country was faced with an existential threat, it were traditional warriors using charms and amulets fearlessly fighting with the belief in their own bullet-proof invincibility that helped to save the people.
Sadly, in Sierra Leone, the presidency of Retired Brigadier Maada Bio, President of the Republic of Sierra Leone, whilst trumpeting “Human Capital Development” as its forte, is on a ruthless assault on devaluing indigenous knowledge, or, knowledge garnered within Sierra Leone by seasoned professionals. That is another narrative. For now ..
