Sometimes, writing is a therapeutic and liberating need to get the rage and pain that oppresses inside. The book African scream, for the right to existwritten “without hair on the tongue” by the Cameroonian priest Cyprien Melibi Melibi, responds to this motivation. Africa deserves something better.
You have to scream. It is so much the historical suffering of Africa that it is difficult to save good manners. Even more when the same thread that comes from centuries of slavery, colonization and neocolonialism remains present in the current domain and exploitation of the continent. The cry of Fr. Cyprien Melibi is going first to the “European Western Civilization” that one day began the African adventure and today “wants Africa without Africans, only for its resources and wealth but without taking into account people.” Wood, gold, iron and the cobalt of Africa enter with all ease in the West, Africans do not.
Africa feels “disappointed” by the colonizing lie that “was neither humanization nor evangelization or expansion of human rights.” Europe is indefensible and is declared “guilty of the permanent and violent theft of the vitality of the black people of Africa.” The verdict is firm and nobody can change the past. Now it is time to work to reverse the situation so that the West and Africa can establish authentic and respectful relationships, “equal to equal.” Although the author declares himself a student of the “Madiba School,” the Great Nelson Mandela, who “invited us to renounce revenge and prevent hate and violence from being installed in our hearts,” nothing prevents him from expressing a very hard criticism against the abusive attitude that the West continues to maintain in their relations with Africa. It is also self -critical with Africans, who must assume their responsibilities, noting first of the “controllable elites” and prepared by the West to be collaborationist, to the detriment “of the good of their peoples.”
The book will be the thesis that Africans will have to start from their own resources – not only materials, but, above all, humans and cultural – if they want to free themselves from external dependence. The structural plans for Africa were “a scam” to “facilitate the control of multinationals”, and the current development aid is a “deception” of the West to keep the continent. True development will never come from outside, “neither any administration can be developed with a budget that comes from outside”, because “who pays” and at any time “can make you blackmail.” In this regard, and although it is not reflected in the book, Fr. Cyprien looks good stolen”.
Church
Father Melibi is concluding in Spain his doctoral thesis on the Cameroonian Catholic theologian Jean-Marc Ela and combines the study with pastoral work in the Diocese of Vitoria. His belonging to the Church does not prevent him from criticizing it in his book, in which he dedicates two chapter to address the ecclesial issue. In them, the author shows his disappointment for the low prophetic commitment of the Universal Church, which “should commit more next to Africans under so many lies, frustrations and despair,” but also points with the finger at the African private churches. The author recognizes the risk of generalizations, but insists that many churches on the continent are “accommodated with political regimes, accustomed to receiving subsidies from Rome and lacking resources to think differently.”
The last chapter lists a cast of African values, customs and virtues that allow the author to glimpse a future of hope for the continent. Although in the 254 pages of this book born of pain by Africa abound the strong words that question the reader, the work does not intend to be a sterile criticism or a simple kick, but a bold proposal to build a better Africa.
