By Owei Lakemfa

COME away my brothers and sisters. Come away from those foreign cultures where men make a career of bachelorhood and women  make a hobby of single parenthood. Where men are applauded, even by presidents for allegedly changing their sex, and pre-nuptial  agreements ensure that marriage, where it occurs between a man and a woman, is no longer ‘Till-Death-Do-Us-Part’

What do we have to learn from people whose idea of the world, is one that is upside down?  What can we learn from the craze of men being celebrated for marrying men, and women widely applauded for exchanging marital vows with other women?   How are we expected to accept such culture as human rights when  they violently assault our collective rights?

You know, my brothers and sisters, that in African culture, what goes on in the bedroom, remains there and is not a commodity for public consumption. Calling press conferences to announce a sexual orientation is part of the mercantilist culture of market forces. Would a serious man make a public announcement that he is sleeping with a man when no cultured man would announce publicly that he sleeps with a woman?

What has happened to privacy and decorum? If their gods decree that two men constitute a married couple and that polyandry is an acceptable practice, why must we be asked to either worship such gods or be sanctioned? What has aid got to do with it? They preach the democracy of choice; why should individual choice over ride our collective choice?

Why can’t they have their own choice and we ours? History teaches  that what is moral for a people, may be immoral to another; as they say in their zone; one man’s meat, is another man’s poison. We concede that we are not as civilised as the Germans whose National Ethics Council says that incest is no crime. But to us, it is one of the most abominable acts on earth. If the Japanese courts rule that adultery  is permissible for  purposes of business, we have no right to overrule them.

But for us, adultery is no legitimate business and this they must respect. We do not want our children to have multiple fathers or our women to be public housewives in the name of business transactions.  We  know that the Constitutional Court of our brothers and sisters in South Africa ruled on June 19, 2015 that adultery is part of the right to Privacy and Freedom. But this is not African culture; it is a case that South Africa has kept, and is keeping bad company.

There are those in the civilised world who advocate that pedophiles should be treated like gays and lesbians because it is a sexual orientation for which they should neither be punished nor discriminated against. Soon they will start a campaign that kleptocracy  is a medical condition and that stealing should no longer be a punishable crime.

Just as we marvel at  their ways, so do they about some of our practices. For instance, polygamy which Kenya has  legalised is for them, a crime called bigamy. The argument whether polygamy is not better than their serial monogamy , is not an issue. Every people, with their culture.

So, we  should not sit in moral judgment over them. The good book, says, judge not, and thou shall not be judged. So we  concede to them their cultural preferences, but they should also concede ours. We do not seek to impose our ways on other people, but others should not seek to impose theirs on us.

They brought Christianity to us as the Way, saying he who is not for us, is against us. But while millions of us hold on to the cross, they have abandoned the church in droves, turning cathedrals into museums and social centres, and converting churches into offices and residential apartments.

In contrast, we’re so religious, that  we close down factories and warehouses and convert them into churches. Has it not been said that man shall not live by bread alone?  Whatever happens, we should not abandon the way to salvation just because those who converted us are doing so. Nor should we reject their positive values. But we must  not be copycats; it is the foolish fly that follows the corpse into the grave.

Sisters and brothers, what we are witnessing, is the collapse of the family system in their society. Morals to them take a second place   to expediency. With the rise of individualism above the collective, concepts of the collective like the family, lose their value at the market place while the stocks of  the war industry over peace, and  profit over human lives, rise.

We must admit that they are pluralistic societies and many do not accept the new humanism being created by their states and ruling elites. Russia that has been cast for ninety eight years  as ‘godless’  rejects many parts of the new culture  preferring the old marriage culture and family traditions.

What has happened to them was foretold. The Pan- Africanist, Franz Fanon in his famous 1961 book The Wretched Of The Earth told  an emergent Africa: “Let us not lose time  in useless laments or sickening mimicry” of Europe because  that continent  was “teetering between atomic destruction and spiritual disintegration”

He warned Africans  fifty four years ago “Let us decide not to imitate  Europe…Two centuries ago, a former  European colony took it into its head to catch up  with Europe. It has been so successful that  the United States of America has become a monster where the flaws, sickness and inhumanity  of Europe have reached frightening  proportions”

Come away my brothers and sisters,  we need to build a new  human-centred society   where  the people, not profits, count. A society where democracy is not just the ritual of  periodic elections, but the true participation of the electorate in governance. A society based on our time-tested  values.  Where the nucleus  family is the woman and the man, and we remain our brother’s keeper by maintaining our extended family system. Come away my sisters and brothers, we have better things to do.