It is not fortuitous that, while Kenya marked the international No Smoking Day without a major headline, the United States produced an earth-shaking tobacco consumption event. A court awarded a man a cool Sh374 billion for damages incurred by years of smoking cigarettes made by Philip Morris. He had sued the US tobacco company for having led him for more than 50 years to inhale pure poison without warning him of the extreme perils. The contrast between the two events stems from 500 years of ruthless plunder of Africa by Europe, a hopelessly lopsided relationship described for us by Walter Rodney in his How Europe Underedeveloped Africa.
Most people think of exploitation only in terms of economics.
And it is true that delirious greed for other people's wealth is what continues to impel Europe to bestride the narrow world like a colossus. But Europe might have found it difficult to do this without first working on our minds. I can, indeed, say that our mental castration by Europe has caused the continent much more damage than has the economic exploitation. In the slave and colonial times, the message was crass. It said directly that even the outward bodily characteristics nature gave us against the environment were no good.