Opinion
The Day the Lion believed the Jackal to be King of the Animals: An analysis of Africa and its relationship with the Europe and the West
By Ryan Elcock
Yesterday, I was enjoying the third season of Spartacus: War of the Damned; rightfully called so because even though Spartacus was victorious in several battles with the Romans, the outcome was already predetermined – for those who are familiar with ancient Roman history. However, what stood out in my mind was not how Spartacus’ genius and leadership when facing the Romans, but rather how his rival, Marcus Crassus, began to think like Spartacus and develop a respect for his rival, thereby enabling him to understand and borrow Spartacus’ tactics in order to defeat him.
Interestingly enough, prior to Spartacus, Rome battled the powerful Carthaginian Empire, led by the General Hannibal, who almost brought Rome to her knees. Hannibal, like Spartacus, defeated the Romans several times but made fatal mistake of not conquering Rome when he had the chance. By squandering this opportunity, the Roman Army, led by Scipio Africanus, were able to implement Hannibal’s own tactics with their own strategy in order to defeat him, just like Crassus did to Spartacus.
However, while I was enjoying Spartacus, in all its gratuitous violence and unnecessary slow motion debauchery, I remembered a Chinese folk tale that was used to explain one of the Chinese strategies in The Thirty-Six Strategies of Ancient China , by Stefan H. Verstappen, called: Kill With a Borrowed Sword.
In the Chinese Folk Tale called the Tiger and the Fox, a hungry tiger happens to come across an unfortunate fox who he wants to partake of for a meal. The fox however looks at the tiger and advises that the tiger cannot eat him because he is the King of the Animals. The tiger, of course, begs to differ but the fox offers the tiger a chance to accompany him and see how the fox is truly the King of the Animals.
So with the fox in front and the tiger behind, the fox confidently walks along the path where all the other animals see the tiger, walking behind the fox, and take off running. Upon seeing the animals flee, the fox turns around and says to the tiger, “See I told you I was the King of the animals! See how they run away before me?” The tiger admits his amazement and walks away sulking as he could not believe it himself.
Now this story has been the story of Africa’s, and also the Caribbean’s, relationship with the rest of America, Europe and most of the West. Africa and the Caribbean, notably Africa, has been the backbone of the rise of the Western hegemony and economy. After all, the Greeks and Romans learned all their science and technology from the Egyptians who also learned from the Nubian scholars in the past.
Furthermore, the European Renaissance owes a great debt to both the Muslims, in the Middle East, the Mali Empire and Ashanti, of West Africa, who preserved a lot of the works of the Ancient Romans and Greeks when Europe had been plunged into the Dark Ages. Let us also remember that Africa’s rise, during the European Dark Ages, led to great advances in medicine, sciences and education which the world still uses to this day.
But yet Africa has failed to see itself for what it is – the real king of the jungle. Rather, Africa has not only believed itself to be a subject of Europe and the West, but also permitted itself to continue being the most loyal of subjects by while relegating herself to being seen as an inferior continent with incompetent people unable to rule or govern themselves.
First of all, most of Europe and the West’s wealth have come from Africa, and by extension the Caribbean, for the past millennia. Whether it is through African slaves, building up America and the European colonies in the New World, or through the loan and interest payments, in the form of “aid”, due to the oppressive monetary policies of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, Europe has been able to amass great wealth and fortune from Africa via its resources and people.
However, history has a curious habit of repeating itself and, once again, Africa is on the rise while Europe and the West have fallen into a state of decline. It appears as if the jackal, in all its cleverness and deceit, started to believe its own lie and forgot that the lion is an apex predator for a reason.
So when the economic turmoil started to wreak havoc on Europe, America and the rest of the world’s economy, Africa was spared due to the fact that most of its countries started to do business with one another rather than with Europe and others who disregarded them. Furthermore, many of Africa’s educated, who were taught in Europe and America, have come back to Africa, armed with what they have learned in order to make Africa the lion that is ready to roar and make the world tremble in fear.
But even though Africa is starting to rise and become a powerhouse once again, it is important to make sure that they learn from history and do not allow the jackal to come back, in the future, to convince them that they are no longer the king of the jungle in order to exploit Africa’s resources and people for their own benefit. Because after all, although it is one thing when someone pisses on your leg and tells you it is raining, it is another thing when you piss on your own leg to convince yourself that it is so.