I was playing Redemption Song by Bob Marley the other
day, and one line struck me with a sharper edge than it ever had before:
“Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but
ourselves can free our minds.”
Marley sang those words in 1980, at a moment when many
African nations were still reeling from colonial departure, when independence
was fragile, and when the long shadow of empire persisted in economics,
governance, and memory. The line became prophetic because it named a truth too
often obscured: physical freedom without mental emancipation is incomplete.
In August 2025, those words feel not like nostalgia but like
instruction. The context of today makes the call to mental liberation both
urgent and unavoidable. Across Africa and among African Americans, the same
struggles reappear in new guises: the pull between dependency and autonomy,
between resistance and repression, between the narratives written about us and
the truths we claim for ourselves.
Across the continent, we are witnessing what might be called
the second reckoning of independence. Countries that once symbolised the
triumph of liberation now stand at crossroads where pan-African pride collides
with authoritarian tendencies.
In Burkina Faso, Ibrahim Traoré has positioned himself as a
pan-African champion, echoing Sankara’s language of dignity and self-reliance.
To many, he embodies hope for a continent long trapped in dependency. But his
government’s embrace of disinformation and tighter control raises the question:
can mental emancipation exist under political silencing? Liberation rhetoric
without democratic space risks reproducing the very forms of control once
resisted.
Mali’s Assimi Goïta, similarly, has invoked sovereignty and
national pride. Yet his government has responded to calls for democracy with
arrests and repression. Here lies the paradox of the present: the language of
emancipation is widely spoken, but the practices of emancipation openness,
accountability, and trust in the people are frequently denied.
Elsewhere, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda signed
a peace agreement in June, marking the potential end of one of Africa’s most
brutal ongoing conflicts. But peace is fragile; the M23 question remains
unresolved. South Africa, meanwhile, has launched a “national dialogue” on
poverty and inequality, signalling recognition of a crisis decades in the
making, but citizens remain sceptical of whether this will lead to
transformation or simply words.
These examples reveal the ongoing contradiction of African
politics: the desire to be free from external domination while replicating
internal systems of control. The lesson of history too often ignored is that
true emancipation cannot be enacted for a people; it must be embodied by them,
within them.
Across the Atlantic, African Americans confront another face
of mental slavery: persistent devaluation under the guise of visibility.
Despite cultural centrality, systemic inequality endures.
Recent debates over crime and safety highlight this tension.
Black mayors have pointed to community-led strategies that reduce violence,
countering the caricature of “lawless cities” used to stigmatise Black
communities. Their success shows that empowerment and safety are not
contradictory but mutually reinforcing. Yet the very need to defend Black
governance reveals how little trust Black leadership still receives.
In the media, Joy Reid’s revelation that she was paid a
fraction of her peers, despite top ratings, underlines how Black excellence is
celebrated but undercompensated. It is another reminder that inclusion does not
equal equity, and representation does not guarantee respect.
These struggles echo Marley’s lyric: external recognition
cannot substitute for internal valuation. Without mental emancipation, Black
voices risk being absorbed into structures that use them for performance but
deny them true parity.
What does mental slavery look like in 2025? It is not chains
or plantations. It is subtler, more insidious. It is the internalisation of
devaluation, the quiet doubt that creeps in when institutions mark us as
“diverse” but not central, when accents are mocked into silence, when colourism
shapes opportunity, when we measure our worth against standards never designed
for us.
In Africa, it surfaces when development is imagined only
through Western aid models, when leaders imitate colonial structures of
domination, when our educational systems glorify European histories while
marginalising African thought.
In the diaspora, it shows up when assimilation is mistaken
for belonging, when systemic racism makes us question our own intelligence,
when visibility in culture masks erasure in politics and economics.
Mental slavery thrives when history is forgotten or
sanitised. If we fail to remember how systems of oppression were built, we may
fall into believing they are inevitable.
History does more than remind us of chains. It shows us
strategies of refusal. It shows us that enslaved Africans sang coded songs of
freedom, that maroons built hidden societies of autonomy, that Nkrumah and
Fanon spoke of the psychological work of liberation, that Black feminists and
activists across the diaspora refused erasure by insisting on voice.
These lessons teach us that emancipation is not a gift
granted by systems; it is a practice undertaken by people. No government, no
institution, no “diversity policy” can free us if we do not also refuse the lie
of inferiority in our own minds.
This is why Marley’s lyric remains gospel:
“None but ourselves can free our minds.”
This year, the world marked the beginning of the Second
International Decade for People of African Descent. The G20 Summit in
Johannesburg will soon gather leaders, with Africa at the table not just as aid
recipient but as political actor. These are opportunities to shift narratives,
but they mean little without mental emancipation.
If we treat recognition as enough, we will find ourselves
once again visible but not valued, present but not free.
The urgency of August 2025 lies in this: the external
conditions are shifting peace treaties, global platforms, shrinking aid but
unless our minds are unshackled, we risk carrying the same cages into new
rooms.
Bob Marley’s Redemption Song endures because it names
the work that is always before us. Redemption is not only spiritual or
political it is cognitive, emotional, communal. It requires memory of history
and refusal of silence.
To free ourselves from mental slavery in this moment means
reclaiming our knowledge, resisting erasure, and refusing to be satisfied with
performance politics. It means building across continents Africa and its
diasporas toward a future where freedom is not partial, not conditional, not
performative.
The lesson of history is simple but profound: others can open
doors, but only we can walk through them.
Now, in 2025, that truth must guide us more than ever.
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