4.6.4. DETOUR: NATIONALIST HISTORY HIDES MODERN ISSUES

 

POLITICIANS APPROPRIATE THE PAST

Statue in Conakry / zoom

The paunch, an invention, is a sign of wealth and prestige when food is scarce. And it separates the leader from the people. 

Take Boko Haram and its impact on Mandara, hinterland of Bornu and Logone, where adult male prisoners were killed by cutting off a leg. 

A man remembers, "My uncles were taken as slaves. We don't forget, and Boko Haram recalls the time that our elders described."

-- Donald Tada, 

cited in  Au Cameroun, la montagne des persécutés de Boko Haram 

by Joan Tilouine, "Le Monde," May 23 2018 

Indo-Asian News Service

Boko, book; haram, forbidden: The government of Southern Nigeria built few schools in the North. Were memories of slave-raiding a reason? Does the choice of name, "forbidden book" recall the absence of instruction that excluded youth from jobs?  

The journalist says nothing of the particular violence of the explorer's account. Either he has not read it, or as so often, he leaves out what he does not understand. 

But at least he mentons the raids. 

Ignoring the raided hides

what outsiders ignore 

and victims do not forget. 

*     *     *  
Next,

4.6.5. 

Samory and the Senufo Judas