Consume Product

Africa intriguingly has a 'split personality' in the sociological sense of the term (a concept that implicitly appears in the work of the German sociologist Tonnies, which later influences the American sociologist Robert McIver, which later influences the Iraqi 'father of sociology', Ali al-Wardi) regarding these issues.

What these three sociologists were essentially getting at was that being modern, being affected by modernity was like being bestowed a whole new personality. Pre-Enlightenment and pre-European colonial peoples tended to live a comparatively more non-technologized, non-urbanized, tribal, collectivist existence. The Enlightened, colonial, and post-colonial period is marked by the negation of these things.

Tonnies observed this in Germany. McIver applied this concept to America. Al-Wardi took this from his understanding of American sociology during his time in the University of Texas and applied it to Iraq. He observed the personality that was Bedouin, nomadic, and tribal and its conflict with the alternate personality that was Westernized, urbanized, and detribalized replacing it. He observed that this 'split personality' created a conflict in many Iraqis.

For instance, the former personality has no problem with honour killings. There is nothing wrong with you killing a man who raped your mother, sister, or daughter. It seems justifiable in the eyes of many people, including yours truly. Yet the latter personality, in stark contrast, has a deep problem with it: everything must be by the rule of law, men can't take the law into their own hands, and the like. Thus an Iraqi man caught in such a predicament does not even know what to do, because his more authentic personality leads him in one direction and the personality implanted in him by European foreigners leads him in the other. What then does he do? He could kill the rapist. But he would risk coming into conflict with people dominated by the latter personality, such as the government, who do not believe in such things as *lex talionis* because of their Westernized, urbanite personality. Or he could go to said government, but risk coming into conflict with people dominated by the former personality, such as those in his family or tribe who might see him as a coward and the like.

Al-Wardi was also influenced in these views by the Tunisian protosociologist Ibn Khaldun, who observed much earlier than Tonnies that there was a clear divide between two types of groups. Successful groups eventually became urbanized, detribalized, degenerate, and weak. This led less successful groups to eventually overthrow them and become the new most successful group, only for the cycle to repeat itself. Thus four men of quite different backgrounds - Khaldun, Tonnies, MacIver, and al-Wardi - observed parts of this wider phenomenon both in Western and Islamic societies.

Let's apply this now to Africa. We don't need to worry about regional differences: one has to pass through seven or so countries to get from Liberia to Zambia, two of the pictured countries, demonstrating no real difference on this issue between western and southern Africa. On the one hand, you have what appears to be the more authentically African personality. This personality is more impulsive and instinctual. This personality is that of rebel interviewees who candidly admit on camera that they have raped many women. It's just what we all do, we can't help ourselves but to rape, and we shouldn't even try. It proves that we're real men and, well, why would you care about it, anyway? From this personality also comes other eccentricities, such as the notion in many African countries, especially southern African countries, that rape of a virgin girl can cure HIV/AIDS. (Other bizarre 'cures' for HIV/AIDS include toothpaste [according to Gambia's Yahya Jammeh] and having showers [according to South Africa's Jacob Zuma].)

You then have the personality that is Western in origin. Whether it comes from Christian African churches or obese feminists waffling about 'violence against women' on Zimbabwean television, all of these foreign sources - Christian, Leftist, liberal, whatever - converge on the polar opposite point of view. This personality tries to use ideology to repress African impulse and instinct. We don't have to rape, we can do better, we have to try to do better, and, besides, your reasoning about rape curing HIV/AIDS is based on false premises. 'Real men don't rape', says the sign, contrary to the understanding of these rebel types.

That's where these signs come into the equation. They represent the latter, more ideologized personality in mortal combat with the former, more impulsive and instinctual personality. At the moment, it seems like the latter is winning: birth rates are slowly but surely declining, feminist policies such as Namibia's Zebra policy are increasing in number, women's power is increasing, tribal identities are waning, and the foreign religions of Christianity and Islam continue to play a large role in life.

But the battle to solve this identity crisis, this conflict between dual personalities, still hasn't been conclusively won. These foreign, imported ideas that are becoming exceedingly strange, such as the rule of law, rehabilitative justice, and restorative justice, are still being challenged. 'Jungle justice', or 'street justice', still occurs. A suspected murderer, rapist, or thief can still find himself 'necklaced' or stoned to death by those crowds composed of those who engage in the 'mob violence' and who do not 'respect [the] rule of law' of the bottom-middle sign, who angrily decide to be their judge, jury, and executioner. And in certain ways, such punitive and retributive ways, which were once also the ways of the foreigner, have all-too-obvious appeal. The foreigners' ways are time-consuming and costly. What if we are impatient and want results now? When the population is so high, life seems to be cheap, expendable. Stones are fast and cost nothing. Trials are slow and expensive. And what really is this abstract 'justice'? Shouldn't we be more interested in removing offenders from society rather than getting this nebulous justice? Is jail and the death penalty really even about justice? Containing offenders, removing offenders from society so that they do not offend again, doesn't that seem to be the actual purpose both of jail and the death penalty?

If a Malthusian collapse-type scenario occurs, in particular, it is quite conceivable that it is the former personality that will ultimately emerge triumphant, victorious: with a desperate Africa, populated by a few billion, exploding into an orgy of rape and violence on a scale quite unlike anything that the planet has ever witnessed. After such rapid depopulation, the few survivors - those most successful in a social world of extreme predation - will continue on in an Africa in which what is old is new again: an Africa more authentic and decolonized than in centuries, one that has gone full circle, built on the bones of billions of losers, the winners finding themselves living just like their ancestors did before the first White explorers stepped off the boat. Darwin and his acolytes would feel that their theories about 'natural selection' were vindicated should such an event occur.

The African, if he is honest, might find that this old and yet new Africa is more to his liking. With all the complexities of money, politics, work, and technology out of the way, he can return to building harems and doing all else that he ultimately most likely feels happiest and most contented doing. After all, a lot of 'black criminality' seems to be about the White man trying to stop the African from doing what he simply enjoys doing: his idea of fun and enjoyment - a little molestation here and a little rape there - is often our idea of crime and deviance. Some of what induces in us such things as anger, fear, and offence induces in him such things as delight and joy.

A final point that came to mind: these signs really entail Africans fighting against their own nature. Those Africans who put up these signs are trying to eradicate the parts of their own nature that foreigners wish were never in there. In that regard, I am far less 'racist' than these foreigners: I have no desire to see Africans change their nature, what matters is only that good people are never victims of the African's bad nature. And, ultimately, no good people are among them; for instance, their women can hardly consider themselves good - or even victims - when it was their wombs out of which each generation of rapacious Africans came. You raised the males of which the feminists and others among you complain, so you are not without blame.

In conclusion, there is a clear conflict in Africa between two personalities: one that is more ideological/imported, implanted in Africa by colonialism; the other, more impulsive/instinctual/indigenous, that predated colonialism.

I like that you can tell by the graphic design where in Africa these photos were usually taken. Most of these look like west Africa. Some signs do have clues, such as the bottom left one which lists "Clara Town", a slum in Liberia.