The Cupbearer

There's another tactic of narrative or media warfare that is used by the Western-funded NGO/media/narrative machine in the motherland. When they feel that the African public is not swaying in a direction they are comfortable with, their activists look for this one person whom they think has a voice, and because they have access to Western institutions (media, academia, church, corporate sector), the activists capitalize on ambiguities, attack and humiliate the target not for what they say, but for their so-called qualifications. That's why the two glorified bots specifically mentioned my profession. The unspoken threat in that attack is that "you have western credentials, so you should toe the line or they can be withdrawn." The donor-narrative warfare machine banks on that tactic working because they know life in Africa is precarious. The message isn't just to the individual, but to the handful of highly qualified Africans across the continent. The message is that their public rhetoric must be perfect, without a single ambiguity, and if not, their credentials can be attacked. This is why highly educated and skilled Africans rarely speak on social issues beyond their narrow expertise. Yet the point of education is to dialogue with the world. This is why the team at @Spearhead_Af was saying in their latest Roundtable that we will get no respect worldwide until we sort out our economic sovereignty. We cannot have conversations about ourselves, in ways that are respectful to us, when we live under the constant economic precarity. When we are economically insecure, small threats become amplified.