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Saturday 24 January 2009

Is it Wolfman? Not its Goatman!

If ever there was a story that proved that some the human race is still only partially out of the worlds of sorcery and ignorance, its the news from Nigeria that a crowd of local vigilantes have arrested and handed a goat over to the police.

They claimed that the goat was actually a car thief who had changed into a goat to (unsuccessfully it appears) escape capture. Many members of African communities still believe in witchcraft, voodoo, shape changing and zombies etc.

These kinds of stories come out far too regularly to be dismissed as just 'eccentricity' and this small sample from this century;
shows that its well spread both in Africa and amongst African/Caribbean communities.

Of course non African cultures such as the Saudis believe in witchcraft as well, and no doubt in the multicultural world in which we now live, these beliefs are of 'equal value and validity' as science and the age of reason ..... however the wisdom of that kind of PC nonsense aside, and ignoring the fact that there is much laughter in Nigeria, and elsewhere, at the story, there is a more serious point to this story.

Much of Africa is ill educated and ignorant (frankly not much different than before the colonial era), and there lies the key to its continuing failure as a continent.

Until all Africans are given a free, secular education, they will never escape the primitism and tribalism that scar the post colonial history of sub Saharan Africa.

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