Editor,

RE: "Are multilateral trade agreements overrated?” (The New Times, July 26). I don’t have much more to add than the excellent advice from Ggwanga Mujje. However, in relation to your claim that you are ‘not doing anyone’s bidding at all’, that you are ‘an independent thinker’, who likes ‘well-researched and objective commentary on real issues’, allow me to paraphrase Charles Baudelaire: ‘The greatest trick our colonizers ever pulled, is to convince our évolués that they are not conditioned; that Steve Biko was wrong, the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is not the minds of our westernized intellectuals whose education has for matted them into half-baked westerners!’

For, make no mistake about it, many African intellectuals do not realise that their very basic analytical frameworks, inherited from their westernised education systems make them their very own worst enemies, for their deep-seated ‘values’ are those of those who have an interest in keeping them in their place while they themselves maintain their commanding heights.

Until our ‘intelligentsia’ realise how our own ‘thinking’ is used against our own interests we will continue to wrestle with our shadows while those who benefit from our inability to emancipate ourselves continue to feed on us.

MK