Kuirthiy's Word

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Published on www.kuirthiy.com on July 27, 2024

What I have noticed about Dr. Riek Machar is that he believes if he sticks to the truth and facts, then things will work out well. For some strange reasons, he has internalized this morally necessary but politically unpalatable reality. For a politician, this is odd, and very much so. He has been pushing this narrative now for well over a decade, that the world would side with him because he says the truth and President Kiir does not. But as he very well knows, truth in politics is a casualty of political schemes, interests and hypocrisies.

This does not mean there is no such a thing as truth or that truth does not matter. The issue is this: Truth, yes; but cui bono, who benefits?

Since August 17, 2015, when President Kiir and Dr. Riek Machar signed the agreement for the resolution of conflict in South Sudan (ARCISS) and then revitalized it on September 12, 2018, Dr. Riek Machar labored under the bewildering assumption that President Kiir will implement the agreement as stipulated in all its provisions. He also believes that if President Kiir does not implement the agreement, then peace partners and mediators will force him to ensure that all the provisions of the agreement are implemented.

This is a strange state of mind in politics, especially in countries Stuart Hall has described as complexly structured societies. I can say South Sudan is one of them.

President Kiir has shown time and again that he is either not interested in implementing the agreement or he does not know how to implement the agreement. This is a warranted presumption. Why Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) still believes that President Kiir will change and implement the agreement is beyond me.

SPLM-IO has no political leverage. They only believe that truth and facts are on their side and that regional leaders will see who is at fault. But Kiir is the president so how regional leaders approach him is not as a subordinate or someone they can force to accept their punitive dictates.

This is something SPLM-IO must understand. Hear this again: They cannot, and will not, force Kiir’s hand! He is their colleague even when they at times act condescendingly toward him. IGAD leaders tried threatening Kiir like an infant in 2015. We know what happened.

If President Kiir must change, then that condition of change must be a political leverage Dr. Riek and SPLM-IO develop, either within the region or within the country. The agreement itself is not a leverage, but SPLM-IO believes it is.  The case of the Tumaini Initiative is a good example. It shows they neither have political leverage nor are they taken seriously in the region.

Running to mediators and regional leaders regularly to share grievances and the contravention of the agreement by President Kiir will only prove to Kiir that you are politically impotent and potentially becoming irrelevant. When regional leaders share Riek’s grievances with Kiir as casual advisories among colleagues, then any chance of Kiir taking you seriously dwindles with time.

Mediators and regional leaders can only urge the parties to the agreement to work toward the implementation of the agreement. That is all they can do. The people of South Sudan suffer when the agreements are not implemented; but President Kiir does not. He suffers no disincentive when he runs SPLM and ARCISS through the mud. As a frustrated former Ethiopian Prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, once said about the South Sudanese peace talks in Addis Ababa in 2015, the peace process had become meta-talks, talks about talks, not talks about peace.

SPLM-IO and Dr. Riek must find a way, through their own internal political mechanics, to force President Kiir to implement the agreement. No one outside Juba will do that. When President Kiir removed the minister of defense, Angelina Teny, on March 3, 2023, all SPLM-IO could do was share their displeasure and disenchantment with his actions. That was all.

It is time to realize that SPLM-IO political relevance in South Sudan should no longer be through the revitalized peace agreement. It must grow as a political entity. This is time for a political make-over. Even when we all know SPLM-IO is not necessarily on the wrong about ARCISS, and we know that facts and truth are on their side, being doggedly fixated on R-ARCISS is a dangerous political naivete. SPLM-IO’s long-term relevance should be through an institutionalized, coherent platform as a political party. That is the future, and that is the future of South Sudan. If Riek has no political leverage against Kiir, and facts to this date show he does not, and if regional leaders only convey advisories to Kiir, then it is time for Riek to change course. Political and strategic monotony is a sure path to political oblivion.

SPLM risk becoming, or it has already become, politically irrelevant. Unless of course being in government and occupying functionless, but fat government positions is how SPLM-IO wants to remain politically relevant in perpetuity.

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NB: Feel free to share the article; but make sure you credit this website or The Philosophical Refugee (www.kuirthiy.com)
 

Published on www.kuirthiy.com on February 17, 2024

It is obvious that the scheduled elections in South Sudan in 2024 will not be free and fair. This is something the SPLM-in-Opposition has reiterated. Conditions in the country are not conductive for the conduct of free and fair elections, they have noted. 

So why would anyone want to take part in such elections? This is a very good question. Why would anyone indeed?

I don't have any convincing answer. But I have my answer (s), nonetheless. 

Ironically, supporters of President Kiir, the chairman of the SPLM-in-Government, ask a contrary question: Why wouldn't anyone want to take part in elections?

This is the same question the governor of Lakes State, Riiny Tueny Mabor, asked recently in the SPLM rally in Wau: "There are people who say, the elections should not be conducted? Why shouldn't they be conducted?" 

He either doesn't think there are any reasons to the contrary, or he doesn't care if such reasons exist. 

SPLM-IG supporters, who do not need any reason to justify why President should be president, find it irrational that there are people who are jittery about 2024 elections. They are not only confident about the elections happening this year, but they also take the permanence of the presidency of Kiir with a very dangerous intuitiveness. 

As the governor of Warrap State, Manhiem Bol Malek, said during the rally in Wau, it is "Salva Kiir forever! Forever!"

Imagine...forever!

The following sad facts do not bother Kiir's supporters: Millions of South Sudanese are refugees in neighboring countries; no passable roads; there is rampant insecurity; increasing intra and inter-ethnic feuds, flooding; hunger and diseases, etc. 

These are of course mere political theatrics. We see this everywhere. A Trump rally in the United States or a Neo-Nazi rally in Germany or Italy would have similar uncritical, emotionally charged remarks. 

Because South Sudanese governors serve at the behest of the president, these kinds of mindless utterances are to be expected. The governors answer to the president not the people of South Sudan. 

It is therefore reasonable, as the SPLM-in-Option has noted, that the elections will not be free and free. 

But I doubt that elections in South Sudan, given the attitude of SPLM-in-Government noted above, will be free and fair in the next ten to twenty years. South Sudanese politics is still self-justifiably ethnocentric. It will therefore take time for some South Sudanese at the grassroots to realize that leaders are elected because they can deliver services to the people not because they belong to one's ethnic group. 

Free and fair is therefore a distant echo!

But here are two issues that may give South Sudanese a glimmer of hope. Rigged or not, conducting elections in 2024 may start an election culture and psychology. South Sudanese may get used to the conduct of elections every five years until the general political consciousness matures into the strict demands for free and fair elections. Some Africans have slowly gravitated toward free and fair elections. 

South Sudan may arrive there in the longue durée. But we must start somewhere, sometimes. 

Here is another possible positive outcome. 

It may afford those who want to challenge the president a change to air out the weakness of SPLM and President Kiir without severe repercussion. I am dreaming I know! Candidates, in the process of promoting their platforms, may help in the normalization of criticism of the political system in South Sudan. Criticizing President may start as part of the elections. This, hopefully, may help initiate a culture where the president is criticized for his failures without his critics being killed or forced into exile. 

I'm of course not taking things at face value. None of what I have noted above may happen. But we must start somewhere overwise elections will continue to be postponed in perpetuity. 

It is also important to note that President Kiir will win either way. So why not initiate, or start the process of something that may lead to South Sudan desired end: A democratic, inclusive future. 

NB: Feel free to share the article; but make sure you credit this website or The Philosophical Refugee (www.kuirthiy.com)
 

Published on www.kuirthiy.com on December 23, 2023

 The peer-review process can be frustrating and, in some cases, downright depressing. You can spend excruciating months slaving on a paper only for the paper to be rejected by the journal editor before it even goes through the peer-review process. I have experienced this!

Sometimes your manuscript passes editorial review only for the reviewers to recommend the rejection of the manuscript. The editor usually follows this advice and rejects your paper. I have experienced this too!

In other cases, your paper can pass editorial review, then the reviewers after extensive reading of the paper ask for minor revisions or major revisions to improve the paper before they recommend it for acceptance. The onus is on the editor to ask you to address the reviewers' comments. These comments are usually sent to you (author) by the editor. There is no direct communication between you, the author, and the anonymous peer-reviewers. 

Here is an important reminder. Addressing the reviewers' comments can test your patience, professionalism, and the ability to accept being corrected or challenged by your peers. Some reviewers are kind and very professional. They only want to help you improve the quality of your paper. Some, however, can be unreasonable. They can ask for revisions that would completely overhaul your paper. Sad! But true!
Yet, the onus is on you professionally to address or reject some of the suggestions and respectfully explain why you are not going to include their suggestions in the paper, or how you have addressed the suggestions/concerns. 

Sometimes reviewers may ask you to address what you have already addressed in the paper. You have to, respectfully, remind them. At times they misunderstand or misconstrue your argument. Again, you must respectfully and professionally, however annoyed you are, explain how and where they may have misunderstood or misconstrued your argument. 

Another reminder. Be careful when reviewers say "these are only suggestions. You can choose to ignore them." You don't have to accept all suggestions, but you must show how you have addressed all suggestions including the "only suggestions."
Note that failure properly to address the reviewers' comments may lead to the rejection of the paper by the editor even after the 'minor revision' suggestions.

Patience! This process can take months to years. Imagine...for just one paper! (One of my papers was with a journal for nearly three years before it was accepted.)
Here are some pointers to note if you are considering sending a paper to a peer-reviewed journals.

1. You need patience, a thick skin, and humility. You will be reviewed by people who have been researching the topic for decades. Sometimes graduate students start to doubt themselves after several rejections: "May be I'm not cut out for this!"
2. You can send your manuscript to colleagues for some valuable critiques before you submit the manuscript to the journal. This is recommended. 
3. Pick a journal before you write a paper. Check the journal's aim and scope. The first thing the editor does is to check if your paper fits within the journal's scope. Journals only publish within a defined scope. Your paper may be excellent. But it will be rejected outright if it is outside the scope and aim of the journal. Some courteous journal editors may recommend another, suitable, journal for your manuscript. This is rare but it happens.
4. Keep the words count in mind and adhere to the referencing style the journal uses. They are very strict on this. If they want APA, do not send them a manuscript written in Chicago or MLA.
5. If the paper is within the journal's scope, the next thing the editor checks is whether your paper contributes anything new to the body of knowledge. If the answer is "no" then the editor will reject it through a professionally written rejection email. That's it. Some editors, depending on their reading of the manuscript, may ask you to address the weaknesses in the manuscript to improve it beyond its current form. They may ask you to send it back for review consideration. Remember, no guarantees it will pass editorial review the second time. If the editorial review answer answer is "yes" then the paper is sent for peer-review. Then you wait! It can be an excruciatingly long wait. Anxiety high!
6. Reviewers check the manuscript for its location within the scholarly literature. Sometimes reviewers will suggest authors you have not referenced if they believe they will help enrich the paper. They check what the paper contributes that has not been addressed. Sometimes you think your idea is new but then the reviewer points you to a scholar who has already made the same argument/discovery.  They ask if your argument is persuasive? They also look for structural coherence, theoretical/conceptual framework (is there one?), methodology, and whether or not the paper is actually theoretically informed. An author may use a theory that does nothing to advance the argument in the paper. Some reviewers check for grammatical errors, typos, and sentential coherence, and clarity. Sometimes the journal will give reviewers guidelines regarding what to check in a manuscript as they review the paper.
7. During the review process, things are unpredictable. Reviewers may say, "Reject" and explain why; "Accept" with minor revisions or major revisions. They suggest how to improve the paper or where they disagree with you. Sometimes they say "minor revisions" but the revisions can be extensive...not so minor. It is up to you to assess which suggestions to accept and which ones to reject. But you must remember that without reviewers' recommending your paper for publication, the editor will reject your paper. You must make responding to reviewers sound like a professional discourse between peers. Be open-minded. You must also respond to the reviews within a specified time-frame (by the editor) otherwise the paper would be considered a new "submission" even if it was recommended for publication. Be time conscious when responding to reviewers' recommendations/suggestions. 
8. Sometimes Reviewer 1 can say "Accept", but review 2 says "Reject." The paper is then sent to a third reviewer to break the deadlock. Note that the reviewers' don't know who you are. The paper is reviewed anonymously. Reviewers only know your identity once the paper is published. The reviews are mostly anonymous unless the journal de-anonymizes the peer-review process as a matter of policy. There are journals like that. This must be stated clearly in the "about" section of the journal. 
9. Some journals charge article processing fees while others charge article publication fees. Some journals, in fact most of the reputation ones, do not charge any fees. Check the journal guidelines.

So, my friends, go ahead and write on! Here is the link to some of my peer-reviewed publications:  (https://kuirgarang.com/research). Click on the publications to go to the journals. Check what I have called "aim and scope" of the journal. They all have it.

NB: Feel free to share the article; but make sure you credit this website or The Philosophical Refugee (www.kuirthiy.com)
 

Published on www.kuirthiy.com on June 12, 2023

 The social media is, as the English would say, a double-edge sword. For South Sudanese living abroad, Facebook Live and Tik Tok—the two most important avenues of our social media discourse—have become an-everyday reality. Intrusive but necessary, they have become an uncomfortable feature of our cultural and social landscape.

I’m intentionally ignoring Twitter. It’s the abode of pretenders, who think they are better, elites, intellectuals…! They think they are better than Facebookers. They say proudly, ‘I’m not on Facebook!’ That’s a topic for another day.

Facebook and Tik Tok make us laugh, sad, angry, confused, or indifferent. We use them to promote cultural events or fundraisers. We also use them to vent with uncharacteristic bitterness, expose people’s secrets (the post-relationship and post-friendship exposés), or declare enmity.

They are confusing. We complain about them, but we can’t stop watching them, or using them.

But we must admit some things. They are a moral problem and a good. Meaning, we can’t wish them away. Since the good doesn’t need to be fixed, it is the bad that we must address. 

That is true. In Logical Investigations, Edmund Husserl tells us that Truth is ‘eternal’. It’s not bound by time or a place. (You’re free to dispute this!)

If you use this social media duo [Tik Tok and Facebook] to spread positive social, cultural, and political messages, then kudos. Continue! We need you. That’s true. That’s eternal.

But here is the problem we must address. Insults.

We must address them not for what they mean to the community. That is easy. Any idiot in our community knows that Facebook Live and Tik Tok insults are moral harms and social wrongs. No reasonable person, even the foul-mouthed Facebooker, would say public insults on Facebook are a moral good.

What we must address as a community is the underlying problem, the unspoken. We tend to focus on the fact that so and so insults so and so. The question we must ask ourselves is: Why would a reasonable personal go live, his/her children in the house, and open a verbal artillery of the unspeakable? It’s not the visible that is the problem; it’s the invisible.

What happened to rɔ̈ɔ̈c ë guɔu (shame) and riëëu de rɔ (self-respect)? Why are people saying anything and everything that comes to mind publicly? There must be something deeper, something Freudian about the public insults. Why do the young men and women who vent publicly in the most grotesque of ways on social media believe this is the panacea? Of course, insults make us feel good.

Remember when we were kids and a certain son and daughter of a certain man beat you up. You’re weak and cannot compete so you use your mouth. After thirty seconds of hurling the most filth you can imagine on that son of a gun, you feel amazing! Sigh. But then you run! Run!

Of course, folks who unleash their smutty tirade know public insults are not the panacea for their problems. No matter the amount of vitriol they unleash on their targets, the problems will remain.

But then they feel good! Well, before their friends and relatives call to ask them to refrain.

But their insults play two roles. It gives them a chance to say: ‘I’m not the problem.’ For women, it also gives them the chance to speak. To use Spivak’s expression, women in our traditional communities are the subalterns who don’t speak.

A good wife (tik| tiŋ pieth/tiŋ nɔŋ piɔ̈u) or a good girl (nyaan pieth/nyaan nɔŋ piɔ̈u) doesn’t speak about her marital problems. A young South Sudanese female doctor recently said that women have been freed from the constraints of our tradition. They can no longer afford to be the non-speaking good girls or good wives, she argued. They’ve found a voice.

That sounds good. Worrying but understandable.

I must add something though. Since I’m not a medical professional, I’ll ask our health professionals some questions.

Is there a mental health, trauma element to this?

There is normal venting or speaking out your truth. But then there is scotch-earth, full-blown, leaving-nothing-to-the-imagination paroxysm. Is there something we can do as a community to help people vent respectfully? How can we validate venters, especially women, without normalizing harmful Facebook videos?

What our people don’t realize is this. Venting on the social media, however deceptively privately or reasonable it appears, is like going to the shopping mall full of people and screaming one’s frustration standing on top of a table on the food court. Imagine that. Imagine it for a moment. You may say it is not the same; but it is.

Like it or not, the social media is here to stay. All we must do is to minimize its harm and maximize its usefulness. But if we don’t go to the roots of the problem that make people vent publicly without any ounce of retrain, then we shouldn’t complain about any filth on Tik Tok and Facebook.

The great danger to public venting is this: They are social harms that make some people heard, and self-validating. ‘I will not be ignored!’ is the message.

South Sudanese community ‘leaders’ and health professionals, this is your challenge. 

The likes of Kuirthiy can only write!

Published on www.kuirthiy.com on May 28th, 2022

The mass anti-racist protests that followed the murder of George Floyd by Derek Chauvin of Minneapolis Police Department on May 25, 2020 provided a glimmer of hope for victims of racism. For the silent men and women of African descent who experience constant societal stigmatization and police brutality, the protests showed that societal attitude can change. 

While the protests were emblematic of what is possible in the fight against systemic marginalization and its mitigation, these protests have a way of ending up becoming events rather than sustained anti-racism processes. 

To change social attitudes and bring about sociocultural and systemic changes, therefore, sustained and accessible educational and cultural strategies become necessary. Fighting Anti-Black Racism or Afrophobia need a multi-sectorial, multi-layered approach. 

There are now calls and petitions to teach “Black history” in all Canadian schools following George Floyd’s murder. 

This essay suggests that reading fiction and history should be encouraged among elementary and high school students. This suggestion may sound odd. In the age of social media and Netflix, however, reading books has become less attractive. 

I once asked a teenage mother during an intake if she had an email. I wanted to send her some resources. She told me she had Facebook but not an email. When I asked how she could have a Facebook account if she did not have an email. She told me she did not know. 

When I asked another young man about reading, he told me he liked to read. When I asked what he reads, he couldn’t really tell me. He then smiled and said, "some articles…online.” He couldn’t even tell me the website and the topics he likes. 

Reading books is not everything. But it opens a world one does not see every day. It makes you travel without travelling. 

While students are encouraged to read in school, most students take up reading because it is required. For young people brought up to face the reality of racism, this is a travesty. 

However, reading for self-empowerment or to develop empathy among children and the youth needs the involvement of parents and community mentors. This, I hope, would make reading part of children and youth social and cultural growth. Emotional strength in the face of racism is a necessity.

Reading may encourage students from dominant social groups to develop a sense of empathy with “racialized” students. 

“Racialized” students may not only develop empathy, but they may also be empowered to resist misinformation about their history. Students of African descent are confronted by two things in the school curriculum: Lack of history about them, or a distorted version of their history. This is a consequent of institutionalized racism.

But we cannot leave corrective measures to people who are not affected by a distorted history. It is like making racism fix racism.

There is now, however, a cautious optimism in Canada’s campaign against racism.

People in positions of authority are thinking of curriculum changes to include ‘Black history’ for all students. This a hopeful beginning. But this is not enough. It is more mechanical than sentimental. We need both. People are more motivated if they have a sentimental connection with the moral issue in question. Why would people care about racism if it doesn’t affect them? 

Making reading a cultural pastime for young people therefore becomes important. It may take a young Toronto teenager to Nigeria of Achebe’s Arow of God, the South Africa of Peter Abrahams’ Mine Boy, the Barbados of George Lamming’s In the Castle of My Skin, the Ohio of Toni Morrison’s Beloved, or the West Africa of Leo Frobenius’ The Voice of Africa….etc.

Consequently, reading fiction, African and African diaspora history become important. This can be buttressed through literacy programs at young age.  In a multicultural country like Canada, this is vital in the fight against racism.

It is important to note that Canadian immigration was openly racist as late as 1962. Racism, according to David Matas, was the immigration policy. 

Below are important examples of reading programs.

In Toronto, The Reading Partnership  works with parents and children to help develop a reading culture at an earlier age. 

As Camesha Cox, the founder of The Reading Partnership has argued, encouraging literacy and reading at an early age can create “a culture of reading and learning.”

Using the work of late American novelist David Foster Wallace, the California-based Reading Partners writes that reading helps ‘build developmental skills of emotional intelligence and empathy, enabling our young readers to better connect with other perspectives and human experiences.’ 

Maria Nikoleja, a professor of children literature at Cambridge University argues that ‘the main attraction of fiction is the possibility of understanding other people in a way impossible in real life.’ 

For young people whose histories and cultures do not feature in Canadian educational curricula, this aspect of reading becomes important.

What exacerbates marginalizing experiences when young people find themselves stereotyped are lack of constructive strategies they can use to push back while informing others and remaining safe. 

When they encounter racism, they either fight or become sad.

‘My brother is always getting into fights over’ the N-Word, said Zora, who was interviewed by Jennifer Kelly in her book, Under the Gaze. 

This violence is instigated by a sense of helplessness. But when these young people fight, they are easily stigmatized and criminalized.  

Even a child as young as a six-year-old has been handcuffed by the police without parental consent.

This would not happen if this child was not of African descent. 

In a multicultural Canada where meaningful inter-ethnic and inter-racial cross-cultural exchange is extremely limited (or non-existent), equipping young people with historical knowledge about themselves and others can help in combating stereotypes. 

Not only does reading enable young people to develop positive feelings towards others, but it also offers them constructive ways to express their emotions. 

In the age of negative social media influence, encouraging students to read fiction is something teachers, parents and youth workers need to encourage in all students because research supports its usefulness.

Reading may also help “racialized” youth to self-educate. This may help them resist stereotyping through corrective engagements. 

One of Jennifer Kelly’s participants said he knew a historical fact his social studies teacher didn’t know. “I told him,” Desmond said to Kelly, ‘that the first lady in the newspaper industry was a Black lady [Mary Ann Shadd], and he didn’t know.” 

Desmond added that these “Black stuff”, which are supposed to be taught in social studies, are missing. 

More than 20 years later, what Desmond said is sadly still the case. "I would love to see more about Black history and about racism in our society today and how we can face it in the future,’ said Bayush Golla to CBC on June 17, 2020. 

Desmond felt empowered, but he was not alone. “Last year I was able to teach people stuff about Steve Biko,’ said Grace. ‘You feel so much better,’ added Kathleen, ‘You walk away thinking, “yeah we did we did that.” You want to brag. I would go to school and say, “did you know?”’

Like Desmond, Grace and Kathleen, Dagmawit Worku, a year 12 student in Cameron Heights Collegiate in Kitchener, Ontario, is still self-teaching “Black History.”  

This is an educational, community-based empowerment racialized youths, especially Africans and students of African descent, do not have access to in school curricula. 

If there is anything history has taught us, then it is this: It is morally dangerous to assume that people will do something because it is morally important. A sentimental connection is most of the time a moral motivator. 

Therefore, parents and students resort to ways of getting this empowering knowledge. Lorraine, another student Kelly interviewed said that her father ordered books from the United States “books you don’t see around here.” Kathleen puts it well when she said that “If it was your own culture…you would work hard so much harder.” 

Canada may be multicultural de jure, but it is monocultural de facto. 

Encouraging children to improve their literacy at an early age and then urging them to take reading as a cultural activity may help raise informed and compassionate youths. Excluding “Black history” today is not a question of malice or racism per se; it is a question of sentimental connection. 

As Kathleen has put it, “If it was your own culture…you would work hard so much harder.”

To cite: 

Garang, K. ë. (2022). The autodidactic: Reading for social resistance and empathy. The Philosophical Refugee. https://www.kuirthiy.com/2022/05/the-autodidactic-reading-for-social.html

Published on www.kuirthiy.com on March 17th, 2022

African American historian, Nell Painter, argues in her book, The History of White People , that what we believe depends on what our cultures and society has educated us to look for in anything we do. This is a social reality we tend to overlook; or we attend to it only when it becomes relevant.  

The problem with contemporary social justice discourse in the west, especially in North America, is that advocates expect the target of their campaigns to know everything about anything; and they also expect them to believe things in their culture in the same way they believe social issues in other cultures. This is not only impractical, it is also a natural impossibility.   

Discourse, as a social use of language, affects or changes how we perceives things. But that depends very much on the culture and the epistemological forces behind the use of language in this context. Take for example, how Americans and the western media describe wealthy and influential Russian billionaires and how they describe American billionaires. Russians billions are 'oligarchs' and western billionaires are, well, just billionaires.  But morally, according to the western intelligentsia, western billionaires are philanthropists not oligarchs.   

While western billionaires affect politics, cultures and social values globally, they are still not considered oligarchs. How many of us would refer to Bill Gates or Elon Musk as oligarchs? Maybe only a few. But this is not because they are not oligarchs but because our linguistic resources come from a defined western discourse that shape our thinking.   

Here is another example about African history. In 1960, the father of African Studies in the United States, Melville Herskovits, describe Africa as a 'geographical fiction.' While this statement is true, I have always wondered why this statement is restricted to Africa when every country in the world, and I mean every country, is a geographical fiction. All borders in the world were arbitrarily created. (I address this issue in "Birth of a State).  

But many African historians and analysts have taken this Herskovitsian view that Africa is a geographical fiction without being critical of it. The reason? The discourses and epistemologies that influence our thinking about Africa and about ourselves are informed about what western scholars have written about Africa.   

Our understanding of Africa and African issues is proscribed; it is determined by the linguistic resources, the historical and modern discourses coming the west or the legacies of slavery and colonialism. This is why postcolonial scholars attempt to rethink African history as UNESCO has attempted to do with the General History of Africa. It is also the very reason why The Empire Writes Back.   

However the average man and woman in Africa has little luxury to rethink history so they rely on a group of people that French existential philosopher, Merleau-Ponty has described as 'the community of thinkers.' They believe a world that has already been structured for them.   This is the case with the oligarch epithet.   

Even when it is factually accurate to describe Bill Gates as an oligarch, one would find oneself at the receiving end of the western media disparagement because the western culture has trained us to think of Bill Gates as a 'philanthropists'.  

He cannot possibly be an oligarchs.   

We ignore these seemingly simple issues; but this is how the human mind is shaped internationally.   So, anytime you commit to a certain social issue, especially a social justice issue, always remember that people don't believe something because it is simply the right thing to do. They believe it because they have been convinced about its usefulness to them; or that social, political and legal conditions are such that they cannot do otherwise without being penalized.   

We only doubt things because we have reason to doubt not because others expect us to doubt because they doubt it themselves.   

So, is there any special fact why western billionaires are 'philanthropists' and Russian billionaires are 'oligarchs'? There is none; it's all about the discourses we have been raised or taught to believe.