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 separates the leader from the people. 

And what might help understand the present vanishes: 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 violence the explorer mentions. He has not read the account or leaves out what he does not understand. 

But at least he mentions the raids. 

*    *

Ignoring the violence of the past 

erases for the victors

what the vanquished do not forget.  

*     *     *  

Next,

4.6.5. 

Samory and the Senufo Judas