I was perplexed by a question I kept asking myself: What happens to an African’s soul, be they rich African or poor African, after they come into contact with people from Europe?


 I have a table around which sits my high command of dead loved ones. Three of them I’ve never met before. The others are there by default. They look after me and take action, revenge, or satisfaction. They are very engaged with my life but we have tumultuous (sometimes public) conversations, debates, and arguments.

If you cannot get your head around the concept of my heavenly high table, then I suggest you spare yourself a moment to consider the millions of people who continue – nay, insist upon – talking to their dead fathers or dead mothers even though they’re gone. Their father or mother is dead and long buried but still they talk to them.

I bring up my heavenly high table only because I think our latest topic might interest quite a few of you who think you are clever. The topic has been fraught and tempers are high. I’m quite calm and peaceful because my mind is made up. And once I’ve made up my mind about something, that’s it.

But the high table is divided. There have been screaming matches, sullenness, bitterness, recriminations, fingerpointing and scapegoating. What is causing such heat?

All hell broke loose when I stated this in July: Who says, where is it written, that people with talent and skills should use their talent and skills for the benefit of “society” or “the community” or “the nation”? In other words for the benefit of other people who do not have the same talent.

Talent is not evenly distributed, as I’m sure the highly intelligent ones among you already know. You meet stupid people every day. Why should anyone with intelligence want to have anything to do with them?

Totally fed up, angered, and exhausted with the stupidity and meaninglessness of it all, what if we – the ones with talent and skills and abilities – decided not to use our talent and skills and abilities any more? What would happen to the rest – you know: other people, the rest of the country, the rest of the nation, the rest of the world – if we sat on our abilities because we have had enough?

Arrggh! The heavenly high table squawked in unison, “Why would you want to do that?” As if you don’t know exactly what’s been going on, I retorted. They do know exactly what’s been going on, but I know, because they keep telling me, that there are times, and they keep increasing, when they have no idea – despite being in heaven and being all-seeing and all-knowing – what I will take upon myself to do or say next. Why would I want to sit on my abilities? Let me pander to you. Why, to pursue a life of eating, drinking, leisure and pleasure, of course. Just like the vast majority of people.

God smiled. But my dead father was having none of it. He was apoplectic. “All that education and experience and knowledge and for what – to do nothing!” I retorted: “Daddy, where did all that education and experience and knowledge get me? I’m 46 years old now. I got absolutely nowhere in white controlled places. My brain was, is, awesome. It catapulted me into those jobs – whether I wanted to be with those people or not. I’ve been there, I’ve done it, I want none of it anymore. And that’s it. Never again.”

My heavenly musician cut in saying it’s impossible to separate yourself from your talent. He should know. The princess said she wanted more revenge than that. The centuries-old big-hipped black woman was quietly satisfied.
But they wouldn’t let it rest. Stunned, they said, at least give us some more reasoning. That’s not difficult at all for me. I’m full of reason and reasons.

Well, I said, I’ve been thinking this: If the talented retire their talents or decide to pursue leisure permanently or take an elongated rest doing absolutely nothing, earning absolutely nothing but the bare minimum necessary to satisfy their wants and their leisurely pursuits, what would happen to those many people who feed off the few who are talented?

I was courting a response but there was silence. So, again, I answered my own question. What happens to the many who feed off the few when the few decide they have had enough? The many become the great losers. They lose big time.
For it is the individuals with talent who create opportunities for everybody else. It is the talented, the able, the competitive, the driven, the industrious, the proven, the brilliant, who come up with the ideas and creations which end up providing jobs and money (and ideas) for other people.

The self-retired talent will be perfectly fine, all right, OK. They do not have to prove themselves to themselves. But, guess what, everybody else will have to fend for himself and herself both intellectually and for financial gain. Everybody else will neither have access to the self-retired talent nor to the benefits that talent can bring to other people and communities. Scary?  Ha, ha! I don’t think so. I’m laughing all the way to the nearest drinking house and “pound shop – buy anything you like for just one pound”, followed by a nice, leisurely walk during which I might deign to do some easy thinking.

I find my own thoughts on this incredibly logical and here’s why. It’s all personal, of course. I have decided to retire my excellent talent for doing business because I have been jolted by what is inside the souls of Africans.

I was perplexed by a question I kept asking myself: What happens to an African’s soul, be they rich African or poor African, after they come into contact with people from Europe?


 My business was based upon creating jobs for young Africans in Africa. My business was based upon creating exposure for rich Africans who could expand their own businesses and therefore make those jobs for others happen. Today, my feelings are: Why in God’s name should I bother? For what?

What I have seen, observed, heard, experienced over the past nearly three years has ripped apart my desire to continue doing anything for anybody. Why should responsible, highly intelligent, highly creative, empowered, formidable Africans, of prime age, with great ideas and the tremendous ability to implement them for the benefit of Africa, bother to work their guts out doing so when they see how other Africans and people of African descent do not help.

In fact, it is worse than that. When we see how other Africans and “black” people actively hinder, actually sabotage, the progress of that work which will help Africa become rich and provide jobs and opportunities for Africans who have neither and who face life without the possibility of either.

What is the point of trying to make Africa rich when so many African souls are poor? When so many African psyches are puerile, corrupt, and decaying? When too many Africans would rather be paid slaves for Europeans than free people willing to say “No”, willing to say, “I am a free person”. What is a paid slave? Apparently, slavery has been abolished, but there are huge numbers of people whose lives cannot function without having and owning slaves, and there are huge numbers of black people who are still mentally slaves. The only difference between these days and the days of slavery is that now the blacks get paid to be and act like slaves.

Why should talented Africans “be responsible”, “be serious”, remain devoted to enriching Africa, risk our physical health, risk our mental strength, become impoverished, when a lot of others who can help, who can do something, instead do nothing. Absolutely nothing. Not the lifting of a single finger. Why do good when most people do nothing and so many do bad. Why should the highly talented not just look after themselves, like everybody else does? And we could even, just like them, become depraved in our selfishness.

Where is the law, rule, regulation that stipulates that the talented must use their talent because other people depend upon them? And therefore the talented must “share” their talent in order to “help others” irrespective of the wretched costs to the life of the talented one. Utterly ridiculous. Help has to be deserved. I repeat, talent is not distributed evenly, therefore, the talented have a right to decide whom they want to “help out” with their abilities.

And, what’s more, don’t Africans, especially rich Africans, have responsibilities to the welfare of talented people? Who looks after the talented while they are busy looking after the present and the futures of others. Who the he ll raises the gross domestic products of nations? That’s what doing work that provides jobs does. If Africans do not care about the well-being of the talented, why should they care about theirs?

There is no point talking to me. That is what I told my heavenly high table. I cannot be placated. There is a time lag, I realise that now. When more Africans feel able to catch up with where my mind is and act right… well, I’ll think about it. Please note, the time lag is years. I’ve calculated it.

I repeat: Let rich Africans enrich Africa. Obviously they know a great deal more than people like me because they are rich and I am not. I wish them well.