Africa Is Hypnotised, Our Biggest Enemy Is Mental Slavery - Ali Abdi

What most shocked me when I went to Ghana  was seeing so much blue-eyed blonde,   Jesus and seeing so many colonial flags  hanging. So, in Africa, we may face a lot   of enemies but our biggest enemy is our own  mental slavery. That we still sit in. We're   still colonised in the mind. That we believe  whiteness is the only existence for us to   succeed. So we have to be like them, we have  to go like them, we have to own like them. No! [music] Welcome to the African Narratives Podcast this  is Femi Soewu from Africa Web TV and today we   just going to freestyle. We are at the Sfinks  Mixed Festival in Belgium and you can hear the   music in the background and we are just  going to talk to people about different   topics. As usual our focus is going to be  on Africa and I have my first guest here.   My name is Ali. Originally from? Somalia. Ali is  from Somalia. How long have you been living in   Europe. I've been living in Europe, 12 years  now. What was the first thing that surprised   you why you came to Belgium? So many things but  uh if I would summon it up I would say when I   went into a supermarket they had four different  types of water! Four different types of water! What do you mean? What kind of water is.. Packed  water, So You have bubble water, flavour water,   and you have this normal water but four or five  different types of companies that make water,   yeah and for me it was shocking because growing  up in Africa we had to had so much problems to go   fetch water while we're so much gifted with water  resources. So that was a bit confusing for me and   shocking. You’re telling me in Somalia you are not  used to people selling water or different water?   No. Not only selling water but the availability  of water to everybody's need, even to everybody's   style. They have customised water while in  Africa we still don't have a whole systems of   running water laid to every human being's house.  So for me was shocking. But isn't that kind of a   commercial thing that you have to... water is  water. Yeah of course, water is water but and   the inequality between how access water exists  here excess and accessfully and how in parts in   Africa that we still have to figure out how to get  water into the household. So that was confusing   and of course everything is commercialised here.  Okay you've been living been in Europe now for   20 years you said and.. 12 years. Oh 12 years, I  mean. And at that time it was four types of water.   How many types of water do you think there are  now? A lot! it's even way worse and they're all   not healthy! Yeah. This is the African Narrative  Podcast and we are going to talk a little bit   about Africa and Europe. Living in Europe and  also having grown up in in Africa, what do you   think is the biggest misconception both in Africa  and here? Yeah the misconception from Africa here   is that we believe that money grows on trees  here. We believe that they have a running milk.   We believe because of capitalism, and how it's  portrayed in movies in Hollywood in celebrities,   the media. We feel like Europe is heaven for  us. So that's a huge huge misconception because   that's not the reality and the misconception  that westerns have from Africa is that we're   still primitive. Can you define primitive? They  think that we're still living like monkeys and   that we live in huts. That Africa is so poor. Of  course there's poverty in everywhere in Africa,   maybe more, but they neglect majority of  what Africa has taught even to the Western   civilisation like the Moors were the first ones  who came to Europe and told them how to take a   bath. So they weren't even bathing. So that's the  misconception they think that we are primitive but   they have taken so much knowledge and wisdom and  so they think we're stupid. it's funny you talk   about the Moors and how they taught the Europeans  a lot of things. Just recently I met one guy also   who is from Curacao but he traced his ancestry to  Ethiopia and he was saying exactly the same thing   like the whole of Europe is built by Africans.  Yeah, definitely. Europe has outsourced the   brains of Africa for over five centuries.  We had kingdoms like Timbuktu, Mali yeah,   so much so. We welcome them you know as Kwame  Toure says when the Westerns came to us we had   the land and they had the Bible but now we have  the Bible and they have the land. yeah because   because of the. We closed our eyes to pray and  we open it and our land was gone. Voila that's   it that's it. So yeah we have to go back home and  build home. You know for me that's my message for   the black people and because we come here and  we start from zero all the cleaning the hard   jobs jobs that are not good for your health is  done by migrants and the black people. and uh   I was once working in a magazine and there was a  Ugandan man who died in the magazine cause he was   working so long, so much shifts. So there's so  much discrimination here and when you come in,   if you don't have the legal papers you're treated  as criminal. So there's so many things that black   people don't know about coming here and to come  here itself it's it's about a life and death. So   is your life worth for that? I didn't come by  crossing Libya the desert or the Mediterranean   where so many black people are dying. I came with  a visa reunion visa. Family visa so I would advise   black people to um to keep the ancestral ways of  living and until our puppets, our presidents, our,   the thieves that are robbing us until we replace  them, until we find people like Thomas Sankara or   Ibrahim Traore which is now president. I would, I  would feel privileged to tell my African brothers,   don't come to Europe because I have experienced  this or I have this perspective but I would say   there will come a time we don't need to be here  and it's not only for Africans not to come here   is also for us to go back so we have a duty to  play and our role is to go back and not bring   what we learned from the Western society but  also helping with resources sharing resources,   farming together so that's what I would say. You  raised a lot of points there but the one I want to   focus on is the African perspective that, forget  about the Europeans thinking Africa is poor,   but Africans themselves think we are poor. Should  we as Africans be aiming to be like Europeans? No   never. I don't think that. How the Western society  lives is not in accordance with nature. Western   society believes that we have infinite resources.  That we should dig the ground, we should cut all   the trees, we should build all the asphalts. No  our African ancestral way is taking what we need   from the land and not what we want. You know, part  of being primitive is all our mask, all our all   the things we used to worship. The Europeans came,  told us these are primitive things, so we should   not do that. They brought their own religion. We  are adopted it and we forgot our own cultures and   tradition. Yeah I believe that we are really in,  especially black people in the African continent,   we are under a huge spell a huge spell that  has disconnected us from our ancestral way   of practising our ways of defending evil from  ourselves and they've succeeded in some way making   our traditional religious spiritual practices  evil, called it voodoo or give it a bad name   and then they gave us this blue-eyed blonde Jesus  who doesn't even exist in history. Jesus was born   from Middle East, Palestine and he's a brown man  but what most shocked me when I went to Ghana was   seeing so much blue-eyed blonde, Jesus and seeing  so many colonial flags hanging. So, in Africa,   we may face a lot of enemies but our biggest enemy  is our own mental slavery. That we still sit in.   We're still colonised in the mind that we believe  whiteness is the only existence for us to succeed.   So we have to be like them we have to go like them  we have to own like them. No! So I believe we all   have to go back to our beautiful practices.  Benin we, let's even mention Haiti, how they   defeated the slave owners using ancestral powers.  So I believe we should practice our own Gods and   because I always ask; I'm born in a Muslim family  I grew up a Muslim but when I grew up the question   I ask mostly black people is that why does God has  to choose white God and a brown God for the Arabs   why hasn't been a black prophet? Why hasn't been a  black God? Yeah for the African people why that we   have to worship other people's image of God while  we have our own image of God? So I think it's time   to decolonise religion and decolonise our minds.  Before Islam, before Christianity what were   Africans, who were Africans praying to? We were  praying to our own Gods we had our own entities.   We had our own ancestral, spiritual practices  it's it's very different from every tradition.   Black history and spirituality goes back way  to the Kemetic period. Also Egypt was black,   the Nubian civilisation the impact to, but then  white people came and said the pyramids were built   by aliens. So our spirituality could heal people.  You could do superpowers. You could use your Chi   energy and there's a lot of black people now who  practice it. You know the Yoruba people, the Igbo   even in Ghana. But my problem now is you say they  practice it but they are no longer practising it.   I mean you have a child there is a whole ceremony  that goes with it and now they don't do it.   So I mean I understand because black  people has been going through. Are we,   are we traumatised as a race. Not only traumatised  but we're also hypnotised. Hypnotised? Yeah, so we   need to heal from.. These people watching us have  hypnotised us. Not necessarily, I wouldn't say   them but white people did that. Yeah, white people  for the last 400 and 500 years going to 500 years   not only black people but have been ravaging the  whole Global South. Latin America, the India. The   British Empire never sets. So I think there has  been a period of time in a dynasty where there   were different races in the world that had power  but the way white people are exerting their power   is white supremacy they want an absolute  supremacy. They want us to kneel down for   them. They want us to cut our dreadlocks. They  want us to straighten our hair. They want us to   dress like them. They want us to eat like them.  So if we don't do that then we are primitive.   Yeah and I think we have to wake up every  day and realise just as Tupac said you know,   we got to change the way we eat, the way we dress,  the way we talk to each other. The best way of   being brainwashed is not to even know realise that  you are brainwashed. So that's why a lot of people   leave their own religion. They follow other  religion, their own ways like what you are   saying. is there, do you think this can ever or  will ever change? Yeah, yeah definitely. It will   and I believe that our ancestors hasn't left  us. They're walking behind the ether and it's   very easy to connect with them and the last year  there were a lot of black people who were going   back to their own ancestral practices including  me. So I had to get out also from a very Sunni   conservative Muslim family to figuring out my  ancestral spiritual guides. Okay. So there is a   revolution happening and Africa is going to be  in 2030, 40 or 45% at the age of 25 and these   young people are very much open to changing about  the Western perspective in their own countries   at least. You know one of the perspective they  have is, people who live in a hut or who live in   place without electricity, they are necessarily  backward. But what's wrong with that if you've   eaten? There's nothing wrong. I believe that the  way, the lifestyle of Western society is against   nature. So anything that lives with nature and  lives the minimalistic way is seen as taboo or   bad or primitive. It’s their play book. So  they use this play book and this play book   contains how they approach us politically, how  they approach us financially, how they approach   us dietetically also. The foods that we eat a lot  now in Africa are not even our own foods. Rice,   starch these are things that the white man brought  there. So the amount of brainwashing, the amount   of hypnotisation and the amount of spell that  black people are under, it is really huge and the   only way we can break that is if black people who  know this truth unite and put their differences   aside because we black people are not also one  uniform people. We have different cultures. We   have different perspective about the world. We  see the world in a different eye but we should   also not fight and cut each other off. We should  be a big family who have differences and working   out together. The diversity is our strength. Yes  and now we see it as our weakness but for me,   my Muslim brothers, my Christian brothers, my  spiritual brothers, I love you all. But you   can still practice Christianity which is from  Ethiopia. It's 2,000 way back and it's not a   blue-eyed Jesus, so it's just, find the truth you  know and I believe it will happen. It will happen   because you are not having that perspective, I'm  half your age, I'm not having that perspective   and I'm 110% sure the youth, the black youth that  I'll will be guiding at the age of 15 will not be   having that mentality. So I think there is a  progress but it's just starting now. We did a   podcast a couple of weeks ago and it's about  community. Community life. How a child grows   up or how people are in Europe and how people are  in Africa. Looking at both the pros and the cons   tell us which one you will prefer. I don't have  any children so I can't answer that. No it's not   even about children. Sometimes about growing  up, you know we say it takes a village to raise   a child. That's true and I think the way a child  is raised in Africa is more easier on the parents.   They have more support. The community I grew up  in Africa, so I do remember having more than one   mother or more than one grandmother. Even when we  visit our friend's house his mother is just like   our mother. Even the mother, that mother will beat  you and that's normal. If you do anything wrong on   the streets it's not your family you should  worry about but even friends of your family,   the mother so we have this beautiful... But if  that, if that happens in Europe that person is   going to report them to the police. Yes they have  a different understanding. I do believe there is   some positivity in it that also we Africans  should realise which is; the child is never   punished. I believe that it's not only because  Westerns or white people do that but I believe   beating up a child or whipping a child will only  create trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder   or they will have inferior complexity or they  will have no confidence in themselves. So I   believe that if I raise children in Africa I would  also do the small things I learned here which is;   don't beat a child not because I'm going to go  to jail but I want my kid not to go to jail when   he grows up. I do believe that and I do believe  that children shouldn't be pushed every morning   to an organisation where they're kept with lot of  other children. I believe a child should grow in   the house with his mother and father if possible  or with one parents until some age. Yeah. Thank   you very much for joining us for this episode  of the African Narrative Podcast. The podcast   continues. Like I said it's a free session  everybody can just join us and some people   are waiting in the background who are going to  join us also. Thank you very much you're welcome. [music]