The ghosts of empire live on—not as relics of history, but as the air we breathe. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Walter Rodney, Frantz Fanon, and Jean Casimir each remind us that the chains of colonization did not disappear with the waving of independence flags; they simply changed their form. Today, they masquerade as “development,” “aid,” “democracy,” and “progress.” Even when we think we are helping, we often do so through the same instruments forged by the oppressor’s hand.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o warned that decolonization begins with language. For him, the colonizer’s tongue does not merely communicate—it conditions thought, values, and imagination. To use it uncritically is to carry forward the master’s logic. Fanon echoed this sentiment, arguing that liberation requires a violent rupture not just of armies, but of consciousness. We cannot heal the colonized mind with the same medicine that poisoned it. And yet, too often, our schools, churches, NGOs, and even our “revolutions” remain faithful disciples of the colonial blueprint—prioritizing hierarchy, competition, and dependence over solidarity and self-determination.
Walter Rodney laid bare the economic dimension of this trap in How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. The illusion of “help” has always been the velvet glove of extraction. Under global capitalism, nations in the Global South are not partners but suppliers—of labor, raw materials, and even suffering—to feed the insatiable appetite of profit. “Helping” becomes a performance of moral superiority, while the structures that create poverty remain intact.
Jean Casimir, writing from the Haitian experience, pushes this even further. He reminds us that liberation was never granted—it was seized. Yet even Haiti, the site of the most radical human revolution in modern history, has been punished for daring to exist outside the colonial order. Casimir urges us to center the lakou, the communal life-force of the people, as the basis of a new system—one grounded in reciprocity, not extraction; in viv ansanm (living together), not domination.
The question before us, then, is not how to improve the current system, but how to dismantle it entirely. How do we put people over profit, health over war, education over propaganda? We must first admit that capitalism, imperialism, and white supremacy are not broken—they are working exactly as designed. Their purpose is to maintain hierarchy, scarcity, and dependence. So long as we believe their tools—money, militarism, media, and markets—can bring liberation, we will remain their captives.
True transformation demands a radical imagination: one that measures wealth not by accumulation but by the well-being of all; one that values knowledge born of soil and struggle over degrees stamped by empire; one that heals our relationship with the earth, rather than exploiting it in the name of “growth.”
To eviscerate the current system, we must build a new one rooted in care, reciprocity, and shared humanity. That begins with unlearning—unlearning the idea that the oppressed must wait for salvation from their oppressors. Liberation is not charity. It is creation. It is the rebuilding of our minds, our economies, our education, and our spirit in the image of our own collective freedom.
As Fanon wrote, “Each generation must, out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it.” Our mission is clear: to stop mistaking the master’s tools for our liberation—and start forging our own.
Works Cited
Casimir, Jean. The Haitians: A Decolonial History. University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Press, 2008.
—. The Wretched of the Earth. Translated by Richard Philcox, Grove Press, 2004.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature. Heinemann, 1986.
—. Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance. Basic Civitas Books, 2009.
Rodney, Walter. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso, 2018.