← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Lewis Wetzel

Thread 8353

Thread ID: 8353 | Posts: 1 | Started: 2003-07-22

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Lewis Wetzel [OP]

2003-07-22 18:53 | User Profile

This reverse-whigger tells it like it is. Bully for him.

[url=http://www.chrysalis.co.zm/1999/jan/hamdefect.html]http://www.chrysalis.co.zm/1999/jan/hamdefect.html[/url]

The Ham Defect

By Chileshe Phiri

I wish to disagree with two Chrysalis contributors, Chanda Chisala and Nick Tembo, on a certain belief they seem to exhibit in certain of their articles. Chanda (The Miseducation of Chanda Chisala) appears to be saying that the reason Zambians have not done anything big in the world is because of the education system that prevails in the nation (“learning by rote”). I can’t agree with that. The real truth is that Zambians, and indeed all black people, just seem to have a problem with, well, everything.

All apparent evidence shows that we just can’t do what the white people can do. Nicholas Tembo, author of the brilliantly written, and brilliantly flawed, article called “What about the Ham Effect?”, disagrees with the thesis of my present article. He thinks there’s nothing wrong with us -- that we are not cursed and things like that -- but I believe there IS something wrong. I call it the Ham Defect.

Firstly, let’s look at our basic environment. Why is it that blacks have very unclean environments when left to themselves? Has that got anything to do with education? If we take uneducated white people and uneducated black people and gave them two separate villages I bet we would discover in a short time that the white community would look much cleaner than the black community and better organised. Their streets won’t be filled with litter, but the streets of the black people will look like garbage dumps. Why, for instance, do Zambians like throwing things out of their bus or car windows? That would naturally sting a white man’s conscience, but not the black man’s (unless of course he has learnt the ways of whites by exposure to their life styles). Zambians spit on the road without any restraint. They can easily sell (and buy) food that is exposed to flies and stuff on the streets. Every “public wall” smells very bad because people easily use them as rest rooms (Diramba)! And these habits seem to be accepted by everyone as normal.

So much for the cleaniliness. How about the politics? The biggest joke in the world is the democracy experiment in Africa. The other week we had Local Government Elections in Zambia. A Mr. Somebody-or-Other was supposed to be adopted by his party but a colleague of his was preferred to him. Within minutes he defected to another (religious) political party and stood on their ticket (and lost). This has happened many times, even on the national (parliamentary) level. The whole thing is a joke. Everyone knows that people gets into politics for personal gain (how else would you explain instantaneous defections?) When was the last time a Democrat announced that he had become a Republican in America? It just doesn’t happen. They are who they are because they believe in it. We don’t believe in anything. We have an instantistic culture -- give me what’s mine now, I’ll do anything to get it. Isn’t this the damn Ham Defect?

The black people were cursed by Noah (he cursed his black son Ham). Chanda, I believe you’ll invent something big as you seem to suggest -- but that’s not because you are black. It’s because you are a coconut. Nick, you are a coconut, too. And so is the Editor of Chrysalis, the contributors, and I bet all the readers, too.

The solution for a black person is to become white inside while staying black outside (coconut). I’m sure a lot of you reading this article are thinking: I’m pretty clean and hygienic, and I would not get into politics for a base thing like selfish gain, or do business with instantistic or corrupt expectations (see “The Verge of a Metamorphosis part I” and “The Chrysalis Generation”)! But that’s because you are white -- inside.

You are sitting there reading this article on the Internet most probably in a white country or in a white company in Zambia. Or you may have been taught by white teachers during your formative years. They are the ones who built the white conscience into you. They told you never to throw litter around and it has stuck to you since then -- you even see something wrong with throwing left overs through your car window. (I was recently on a coach from Lusaka in which the driver announced, “Keep the bus clean, all rubbish should be thrown out through the window! Please!!”)

The Ham Defect is not only evident in Zambia and Africa. It is prominently manifested in the developed countries, too. The blacks of America are a classic case. The “basic blacks,” as I call them -- the ones who live in the ghettoes, not the coconuts -- are not any different from the African Africans. Their communities are almost as untidy, their lifestyles are crazy and irresponsible and, like us (as Chanda said), they always blame the government for the mess they're in. They just listen to crap -- I mean -- rap music all day. They blame the government, they blame whites, they blame the slave trade (in 1999!), anything. And yet there were other people who went there as slaves or refugees and have made it.

Have you noticed that all the blacks who have made it in America are white inside? And they like hanging out with white people. Let’s see ... who’s the most successful black American today? Oprah Winfrey, with a net worth of over 600 million dollars, is set to become the first black Billionaire in the world (well, that’s if we don’t count Mobutu Sese Seko and one or two other First Presidents who banked donor aid in their personal accounts -- the Ham Defect!). Oprah Winfrey is white. Just look at the audience of the Oprah Winfrey show next time you’re on M-Net. They are not predominantly white ... they are white! Even the quote-unquote black ones. Who else? You love Cuba Gooding, Jr. coz he beat those white folks at the Oscars last year ? He’s white, too. He’s married a white woman (one Sara Kapfer, an elementary school teacher). Kids: that’s as close as you can get to the white community. You love Quincy Jones for being so successful for so long? He’s had at least one white white wife, Nastassja Kinski, and one child by her, his daughter Kenya. What about supercool Babyface? Okay, no white wife, but he’s a coconut all right. Remember the song he did with Stevie Wonder? Did you know that the song was inspired by the Nicole Brown Simpson murder case? Guess which side he was on? White, you're right. And even OJ himself is white. And so is the legendary Michael Jackson -- never mind the skin colour of his first two wives, just look at the man himself!

I don’t use the Coconut name in a derogatory way because I believe it’s the right way forward. For some reason, I think we have this curse on us which has affected us in a very negative way and made us fail to invent, innovate, organise or clean up our world. God seems to have given the white people these gifts and he has opened the way for us by showing us how to become coconuts. Yeah, all of us need to make the English language our very own and teach it to our kids (see article by Nick Tembo).

And more than that, we have to read white books, see white movies, listen to white music, and so on until we embrace the whiteness and be relieved of our natural curse. There’s no point being “nationalistic” and “pan-Africanistic” and “lets-preserve-our-culture-istic”. The other day a Government official said that Zambian radio should concentrate on playing local music “instead of this foreign music we are importing” and they obeyed him. That's the wrong direction , Sir -- backwards.

It’s a popular notion now that Zambia has got no culture of her own, no dress code, and so on. People complain that our young people are copying Western styles because we have no culture of our own like the other African countries. Believe it or not, this is actually a very big advantage we have over the other traditional African nations. No wonder our accents (in my opinion) are the closest ones to being right, or white, (have you ever heard a Zimbabwean say “sacks” or a Nigerian say, well, anything?). Zambians are closer than any other nation to becoming white -- the key to full liberation, development and prosperity. You’ll see it very soon as younger coconuts, the calibre of the faithful contributors to this provocative magazine and their intelligent readership, become fully-positioned leaders in the nation.

Mr Phiri, as his name suggests, is of heterogeneous Zambian ethnic heritage. He maintains however that his soul is as white as the driven snow.