Weapons of our Warfare
Are Africans the only people on God's earth who don't believe in weapons?
I think, the operating assumption by which Africans live is that we are surrounded by friendly co-dwellers.
The assumption itself is not natural - it was indoctrinated through propaganda, colonial education and religious belief. Indoctrinated, so that said co-dwellers can extend neocolonial extraction & capital violence in perpetuity.
With minimum resistance.
But, we just might change our attitude to life, if one day, Africans collectively wake up and confront the truth, that we have been placed on a planet, surrounded by hostile, violent enemies who have been eliminating us steadily for 400 years.
And, that, no one, is coming to save us.
And that, there’s no white heaven in the afterlife to forfeit our earthly responsibilities for.
And that there’s no devil in hell because the devil has been here in our business 400 years long.
And that, we are here in this hostile planet, sitting atop most of its resources, especially energy, which our enemy does not have; and as competition for these critical minerals and other non renewable resources tightens, our better armed co-dwellers are eventually going to need to take us out of the way.
What if we confront these existential truths? Would we maybe start to do things differently?
There is only one thing, not 2, not 3, just one, by which the enemy is superior: violence.
On this one thing Africa must focus, in order to secure a permanent exit from this 400 year rat race. Disrupt, once and for all, this trans generational series of back to back nightmares.
When enslaved Africans were transported coast to coast, naked, on those deep-hulled ships, the only thing that repressed uprisings was not their captors numbers or muscles or beauty or brilliance, but guns.
Fast forward, when President Trump crudely disrupts the colonial celebration of Christmas in Nigeria, it is not with words or intelligence or even money, but bombs.
Weapons are The One Thing.
The one thing white people have that Africans don’t have. And the one thing they have, that we need too.
We don’t need aid. We don’t even need transfer of technology. That’s a stupid idea - it suggests technology stays one place so you have to “transfer” it. Absurd. Wherever humans are, wherever nature is, technology is there. Historically Africa innovated everything, still can, once it deprograms.
Only one thing we need to aspire to: pancontinental military and weapon technology that asserts dominance. Dominance in a world where we have everything, and everyone else wants what we have.
Will it be easy to do? The answer is that we don’t even have a choice. The ease of it is a non question. We are already being eliminated. 2026 will likely see a scaling up of western aggression, indirectly through hostile policy changes, and directly through war.
Africa will not be ready in one year. But we can show that we are clear about the threat facing us. A seed has already matured in the Sahel, and it is small, but it will eventually envelop whatever will be left of Africa, whatever survives the wars of external aggression.
And, just in case anyone hasn’t noticed, the war isn’t coming:
it’s already on our soil.
Still: Africa’s rise is inevitable. Our ancestors who resisted maafa, their enslavement and subsequent colonization, called for this. Not all of us will see this to the end. Many of us will be swept away in it. Our individual experiences don’t count, as much as our collective contribution to what will become New Africa.
Do we want peace & security? Sustainable development? Education? Health? Housing for all? Everything is tied to politics. And to change the politics, Africa also has to challenge the geopolitics. And, the first law of the global political economy is deterrence with the left hand, while building with the right.
As Africa goes, so does the whole planet. Even if they all look the other way now, their own survival on this deadly, now dying planet, depends on Africa. Climate crisis is the planet’s final answer to the unsustainable, imbalanced, violent exploitation of the many to develop the few. When Africa gets back in the driver’s seat, our planet will finally know peace. But, if we want peace, we must be prepared for war.
