Ama Biney Quotes

It is very easy to point fingers at historical figures such as Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Siad Barre, Mobutu, Saddam Hussein, Pol Pot, Margaret Thatcher, Sani Abacha and many other unsavoury figures that carried out anti-people policies, dictatorship, genocide and authoritarian rule across the globe.

The Brookes ship, built in 1780-81 in Liverpool and co-owned by Liverpudlian Joseph Brooks, is the famous illustrated ship of 454 enslaved Africans, that most British school children are likely to have seen in history books.

Another inspiring development around the globe is Afro-Columbian woman Francia Marquez, who was elected as Vice President in Columbia in August 2022. Similar to President Obama’s election to office in 2008, her election to office was a significant historical moment for people of African descent, known as Afro-Latinx in the region.

...if we are to understand historical leaders, we must also interrogate the values, the socio-economic and political processes they help to engender that required sections of society, state and government to concede to dictatorship, genocide and the implementation of anti-people policies.

It is deeply inspiring that young people around the world, such as the Ugandan, Vanessa Nakate, are taking up the cause of climate change, as it is their future that will be affected.

Perhaps it is with nostalgia that human beings look back in history as there is certainly a romanticisation of certain aspects of the past that erases the ugly deeds of human beings.

We have to remember that many media houses in Africa inherited their journalist training programs from colonial rulers. And a lot of the press in several West-African countries do tend to be dependent on CNN, Reuters or BBC.

If I had to select one, it would be the life of the Mozambican freedom fighter, Josina Machel because I think we need to retrieve from historical obscurity lesser known historical figures who contributed to transforming society

As there is a current bandwagon of “decolonizing” everything i.e. the curriculum, the archive, museums etc, and using “decoloniality” and “decolonisation” as synonyms, I think it’s important to clarify what one means by these terms, in addition to how decolonisation is done?

I was one of the few African children in a white dominated school taught history by a white male tutor in the late 70s.

...what lives did these African people have before they were packed like sardines aboard this ship? Did they survive? To say that such an image unsettled me is an understatement.

I think alternative media presents different analysis from a different and progressive ideological standpoint, They often try and go beyond the superficial analysis of the West and give a wider contextual, historical background. They try to inform the readers why things are the way they are in Africa.

I am very selective in what I watch on TV as there is so much rubbish to act as a new societal opium.

Corruption wherever it is – in the West or in Africa – is contemptible and unethical. But when we look at corruption in Africa there are often Western multi-national companies involved. They are complicit in the corruption of African dictators, businessmen or leaders. But Westerners and reporters of the West very rarely ask themselves: “How comes that Western banks are accomplices of dictators in Africa?”

I think it’s important for people to grasp that historical figures required systems and structures and specifically other people to be complicit in the operation of such policies and to buy into the societal vision they promoted. Such figures could not act alone.