SUNDAY COVER & POETRY (VII)

"In positing any solution we have to be aware of some historical background. Africa was colonized at a time when the nation state was a primary determinant of the historical process. The consequence was that the continent is today divided into more than forty-six-states – more than three times the number of Asia, whose land mass is fifty percent larger. This was done largely to further the interests of European power and commerce."

(...)

"Given that Africa was wrongly assumed to have had no history of its own before the arrival of Europeans, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Europe created the image of Africa that the colonial period bequeathed to the world. Europe drew boundaries and undertook to establish a civilizing government in each with hierarchical administration and military support – according to the prevalent model of the nation state.”
(...)
“The question cannot be, do Africans have human rights, but what do Africans understand and desire their human rights to be? Otherwise we are yet again remaking Africa, and Africa’s struggle, in the image of our own modernity, or more truthfully, our own recent past.”

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{Poem: Europe, by Sarah Maguire. Sarah is the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre. She has published four poetry collections. Her latest, The Pomegranates of Kandahar (Chatto & Windus) is The Poetry Book Society's Summer Choice, 2007. in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}

"In positing any solution we have to be aware of some historical background. Africa was colonized at a time when the nation state was a primary determinant of the historical process. The consequence was that the continent is today divided into more than forty-six-states – more than three times the number of Asia, whose land mass is fifty percent larger. This was done largely to further the interests of European power and commerce."

(...)

"Given that Africa was wrongly assumed to have had no history of its own before the arrival of Europeans, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that Europe created the image of Africa that the colonial period bequeathed to the world. Europe drew boundaries and undertook to establish a civilizing government in each with hierarchical administration and military support – according to the prevalent model of the nation state.”
(...)
“The question cannot be, do Africans have human rights, but what do Africans understand and desire their human rights to be? Otherwise we are yet again remaking Africa, and Africa’s struggle, in the image of our own modernity, or more truthfully, our own recent past.”

GET MORE CONTENT HERE

{Poem: Europe, by Sarah Maguire. Sarah is the founder and director of the Poetry Translation Centre. She has published four poetry collections. Her latest, The Pomegranates of Kandahar (Chatto & Windus) is The Poetry Book Society's Summer Choice, 2007. in Life Lines 2/Poets for Oxfam/Edited by Todd Swift, 2007}