FINE-TUNE TINKHUNDLA

 Sir,

As Africans we seem not to be honest to ourselves and admit that we are still not free. Colonisers made sure that our state of mind remained forever under their control. Many African States have been independent for many years but still cannot extract raw materials and process them to finished products within their shores. Raw material is still sent out of Africa and returned as finished products at 10 times the cost spent on mining.

Africa is quick to ratify various charters that Europeans come up with. To this day and age, long after we were given independence on paper, we still name our children with non-African names.

I just cannot understand how an African parent can still be proud to be called an African yet still name their children Jeremiah, George etc. We all know that colonisers sold a dummy to our forefathers by giving them English names on the guise that these were Christian names. Yet the real reason was that they were just too lazy to learn our indigenous names. The colonialist mentality is deep rooted in our minds.

Look at the food we eat these days. We have done away with our indigenous foods and are indulging on western menus. African food is known to be healthy and nutritious but our people would rather have junk food. Why dear Africa?

We look down upon our self-made political systems and prefer what has been brought in by Europeans. Where in the world do you find a system that elevates you to Parliament directly from your constituency irrespective of your financial or social standing? Why do we not fine-tune what we have instead of adopting western tendencies? Let us work on our Tinkhundla and make it work; it could be a model that could be exported worldwide.

The young generation is where the future of Africa is dependent upon. We are so hung up on encouraging our children to learn foreign languages and not their African languages.
Western countries pride themselves in their own languages and have no time to learn an African language, yet here you are as an African throwing away your own language.

S Thwala

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