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FREEDOMWAYS     FIRST QUARTER 1972

clared the predominantly Ibo Nsukka University its “sister institution” and supplied a large number of its faculty and staff. It is a widely known fact that most of America's intelligence activity in Nigeria was concentrated in the East before the war and many Ibos expressed the opinion that much of the CIA's activity had been based at Nsukka and coordinated through Michigan State. 

Within the United States such television series as Cowboy In Africa and the cartoon series Kimba The White Lion are nothing more than Americanized versions of Kipling's imperialist mythology of "The White Man's Burden.” In The Cowboy In Africa, the hero was a thinly disguised Tarzan in a jeep. If at first one did not recognize the new Tarzan because he had discarded his vine for a jeep and had opted for the raiments of modern society, his concern for the animals and paternal wisdom in resolving petty “native” squabbles were sure giveaways. To Americans at home, Cowboy In Africa was supposed to symbolize the benevolent mission of American imperialism abroad, its manifest destiny, and implicitly, its responsibility to the world—especially the exploited nations—to serve as its international police and as arbiter of its disputes (à la Vietnam). 

The imperialist and racist implications of Kimba The White Lion are even more visible. Just as the title Cowboy in Africa harks back to white man's conquest, domination and ultimate extinction of the American Indians in the west with an implicit hint of what is in store for Africans, even more does the title Kimba The White Lion invoke the spirit of Kipling's imperialist mythology. Kimba may thus be called “Tarzan For Tots”! He appears as a pure white lion which enjoys the unqualified loyalty of the darker animals in the Jungle who would face utter physical destruction at the hands of nature and/or evil white hunters (communism?) were it not for the fact that history, fate and nature had placed them under the paternal guardianship of Kimba's fearsome strength and his ever-watchful eye. But for Kimba and his wards, loyalty is not a one way street. The darker hordes can also be seen stampeding to Kimba's rescue when the white one's security is threatened. 

The tragedy of Kimba The White Lion is that it is a cartoon series, designed to pollute and distort the young and unsuspecting minds of black and white children. The innocent victims of such propaganda are destroyed before they have a chance to live; they are psychologically kidnapped and, like the youth and infant victims of the early capitalist sweat shops, forced by vent of man-made circumstances into the imperialist machinery of world domination 

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