Source: Bigstock

This all brings me to the exposé recently aired by CNN on the modern-day slave trade that appears to be running out of Libya. There were lots of ugly visuals, as one would expect, but then rather surprisingly (for some—not so much for me), footage appeared that clearly showed some of the newly “enslaved” with rather strange smiles on their faces and a look of relieved contentment, almost as if they were jolly pleased they had made it safely into the hands of the slavers, who were about to drag them off and into the cruel clutches of the ghastly Europeans north of the Mediterranean.

This got me thinking, then excited, then fuming, and I sought to summon my girls to see what I was seeing, but my angry remonstrations and shouts of “You see? This is what I have been telling you all along!” had them darting from view with the slickness of a homesick mole sliding down a greased pole. But a little of the truth had slipped by the censorious eyes of the “thought police” who direct content at the home of “fake news.”

That “truth” goes right to the core of busting the myth about colonialism being a blight on the continent and the independence that followed being a blessing, when in fact, the very converse is true. That would be made embarrassingly obvious if the countries of Europe and North America were to make it known that they were back in the slave trade and boats were on their way to the ports. The response from the forsaken millions, destined for lives of endless poverty, would doubtless be overwhelming, and the rush for the ships would be unstoppable. If the demand were to be there, I have little doubt Africa would soon be bereft of people. The vast majority would choose to abandon their purported “freedom” on a continent fast reversing back into anarchy and savagery and become “unfree” again under European suzerainty.

Hobbes in Leviathan painted a grim picture when he suggested that the natural state of mankind is a “war of all against all” in which men’s lives are “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Unfortunately, in most cases, especially in Africa, he’s been proved right. But if there is a chance to escape this dystopia, it rests with that part of the world where Europeans built societies on a foundation forged out of the Christian ethos. But of course, nobody is supposed to know that, either.

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