Why are Africans so enraged by the injustices of the past but seldom have the same rage for today’s repression?

Tendai Ruben Mbofana

A deeply unsettling image made the rounds on Facebook this morning, accompanied by a poignant, emotionally charged caption about the horrors of our colonial past.

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The photograph depicts a stark scene from roughly a century ago: a white colonial figure, fully clothed and wielding a camera, posing an African woman who stands entirely exposed, stripped of her garments and reduced to a mere object of curiosity. 

The post spoke passionately of historical pain, of stolen dignity, and of the need to never forget the systematic humiliation our grandfathers and grandmothers endured under foreign rule.

It was an undeniably powerful reminder of the depths of colonial exploitation. 

Yet, as I stared at that image and read the wave of furious, righteous comments beneath it, a troubling question began to weigh heavily on my mind. 

Why do we willingly spend so much of our intellectual and emotional energy enraged by the repression of 100 years ago, while completely ignoring or excusing the brutal repression happening to us today?

This profound contradiction is the greatest psychological and political tragedy of modern Africa. 

We possess an infinite capacity for retrospective outrage, yet we suffer from a paralyzing near-sightedness when it comes to confronting the tyrants, thieves, and oppressors who currently rule over us. 

We are eager to dissect the sins of long-dead colonial masters who cannot harm us today, but we remain dangerously silent when our own leaders unleash state security agents to beat, abduct, and imprison citizens for merely demanding accountability. 

Are we filled with the same fierce outrage when we see photographs of modern activists standing behind bars, repeatedly denied bail for merely demanding justice, or their backs bleeding heavily from vicious beatings by local security forces? 

Do we feel that same burning indignation when confronted with the image of dead bodies lying cold on our streets, shot down not by colonial pioneers, but by post-independence soldiers?

This selective anger is not a sign of historical consciousness; it is a symptom of collective cowardice and political manipulation. 

It is precisely the reason why, despite being free from direct foreign rule for decades, so many of our nations remain trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty, fear, and stagnation.

The reality is that focusing on colonial atrocities has become a convenient hiding place for collective cowardice. 

Directing anger toward a colonial system that collapsed in the last century carries absolutely zero personal risk, making it an easy escape for those too terrified to confront the dangers of modern dissent.

No one is thrown into a maximum-security prison, labeled a traitor, or subjected to state-sponsored violence for condemning a colonial photographer or a racist pioneer from 1920. 

It allows citizens to engage in a cost-free performance of patriotism, venting their very real frustrations about their current miserable standard of living onto a ghost, rather than directing it at the living, breathing perpetrators of their current plight. 

By choosing the easy path of safe historical outrage, we are actively hiding from our civic duty to challenge the present.

Modern ruling elites understand this psychological trap perfectly, and they weaponize it at every opportunity. 

For post-independence governments that have failed miserably to deliver economic prosperity, basic healthcare, clean water, and institutional accountability, historical trauma serves as an indispensable ideological shield. 

Whenever citizens begin to demand transparency regarding billions of dollars in looted public funds, collapsed infrastructure, or routinely rigged elections, the state machinery instantly resurrects the specter of colonialism. 

They tell us that our hunger, our lack of electricity, and our valueless currencies are entirely the fault of Western machinations or historical injustices. 

They use the pain of our ancestors to guilt-trip the living, creating a false narrative that asks us to accept modern tyranny as a reasonable price for historical liberation. 

We are expected to look at a dysfunctional hospital without medicine and think to ourselves that at least we are being governed by people who look like us.

We witness pictures of sick patients sleeping on the bare floor of our public clinics, crying out for basic pain medication that is completely unavailable, yet it triggers absolutely no anger within us. 

We look on with total indifference while our mothers and fathers are left to be slowly and painfully eaten away by cancer, simply because the only two radiotherapy machines in the entire country are broken down and obsolete due to state neglect.

We remain entirely unconcerned when confronted with images of starving, malnourished children whose futures have been systematically looted. 

This apathy persists even though we live in nations blessed with abundant natural wealth, which is then ruthlessly stolen by a predatory few at the top to fund their own opulence. 

Worst of all, we routinely celebrate the very people authoring our suffering, singing their praises and bowing in gratitude for the miserable crumbs they occasionally throw our way.

By permitting our national consciousness to be held hostage by a permanent state of historical grievance, we give modern oppressors a blank check to destroy our future. 

This misdirected energy drains the vital civic courage required to challenge contemporary misrule. 

It drastically lowers the bar for what constitutes acceptable governance. 

We tolerate a ruling elite whose current brutality, violence, and systematic destruction of human life match, if not exceed, the worst horrors of the colonial era.

A local tyrant who plunders national resources to bankroll a lavish lifestyle while unleashing security forces to crush dissent is doing just as much damage to the dignity of the African person as any colonial administrator ever did.

The Facebook post I read this morning concluded with a rallying cry that our ancestors endured such humiliation so that we could stand tall, speak for ourselves, and write our own story. 

That is an undeniable truth, but standing tall does not mean using their historical suffering as a rug under which we sweep modern subjugation. 

If an African citizen today is terrorized for exercising their right to vote, or if a mother loses her life in a dilapidated ward because public funds were stolen by corrupt elites, their dignity is being stripped away just as surely as that of the woman in the historical photograph. 

True honor to the legacy of those who fought for liberation means standing up against all oppression, without regard for the skin color, nationality, or political affiliation of the oppressor. 

Until we find the courage to confront the tyrants of today with the same ferocity we use against the ghosts of yesterday, true liberation will remain an illusion, and our poverty will remain self-inflicted.

• Tendai Ruben Mbofana is a social justice advocate and writer. To directly receive his articles please join his WhatsApp Channel on: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaqprWCIyPtRnKpkHe08