Crossing the Rubicon Revisited

In the past we talked about Julius Caesar’s fateful crossing of the River Rubicon as the seminal act of “no-going back” that sealed the fate of Rome. Another fascinating character is said to have burned a bridge after his forces crossed a river.

In the African context what are the wider implications (beyond the predicted increased harassments of Africans at airports) in the recent young Mutallab’s misadventure in the skies? Is this a one-time shot, an aberration? In the collective psyche of the world the African is seen as a cowardly creature who would do anything to stay alive no matter what. Thus it was easy to bundle him up and sell him into bondage where he suffered quietly. To this day, on the continent, he continues to live in deprivations and squalor in spite of abundance of land and the wealth in it.

When the elder Mutallab went to the US embassy and the CIA about his radicalized son, they obviously did not take him seriously. Would you? Just picture what went through the minds of the sleuths in the air-conditioned aboard of the embassy: You are kidding us; an African to be a danger to us, the masters of the known world? The rest is history, a history which would have been devastating to hundreds of families and a shocker to the world.

But for his bumbling bungling (another African trait), Mutallab was willing to die for a cause—a feat few Africans would dare—,whatever the morality and the criminality entailed from others’ side of the divide. Would he become a legend among the few Africans who took violence to a new level—Chaka Zulu, Museveni, Mugabe, et al.? The rest of us would rather live in misery than lose a limb. To our chagrin, our oppressors know this and exploit it to scare the jibbers out of us just like the KKK used white sheets to terrify the Africans in America.

It is not inconceivable that, as a race, the Africans will become extinct in the not-too-distant future. Natural selection says it. What of famine, HIV-Aids, psychological traumas, climate change and all the other ills that disproportionately haunt Africa? Wailing in the name of Jesus all night long in make-shift churches will not turn the tides and deliver the goods. We need to cross the mind Rubicon because that is where God is.