The Empire Never Left, It Just Got a Day Job
They didn’t just take the land. They took the meaning of land.
Once, land was song. It was memory. It was the gathering place for stories, sweat, and seasons. It wasn’t owned; it was shared. It fed the people, held the dead, birthed the rituals, rooted the dreams.
But the coloniser didn’t understand that kind of wealth. To them, land not fenced was land unclaimed. I’m not dwelling on the past; rather, I stand guided by the understanding that a past forgotten is a future prophesied!
So they drew lines, sold soil and, unashamedly, named rivers after strangers. Who discovers and names inhabited land?
They carved the earth like meat, and called it development. That was only the precursor; when they’d caged the land, they came for the people.
Not by chains this time, but by taxes.
Yes, taxes.
They taxed huts, heads, hands. Not because they needed the money but because it forced people to work for them. Paid slaves are a hundred times more productive; they even compete for positions, crabs in a bucket, they say! Suddenly, the farmer who once grew enough for the whole village had to go work in the mines. The midwife, the potter, the storyteller, became cash workers. Wages replaced wisdom. Full pockets accompanied by empty bellies.
“Produce or perish.” That was the new creed that is still in play today; it never really stopped. The empire got cleverer. Switched rifles for job contracts. Missionaries gave way to consultants; no more barking orders; they’re emailed. The logic? It’s still the same. If you want to eat, obey.
Not to stir up trouble, but it is written, “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.” Was this written by the hand of God or the hand of man, I wonder?
Today, we call it professionalism. Career growth. Global markets.
But underneath all the rebranding, it’s still the same extraction, just wearing a tie. Your value is no longer what you carry in your hands, but what you can sell.
Your talent only matters if it pays. Your dream must come with a monetization strategy.
If you dare to speak the Truth? then
You’re “difficult.”;If you choose integrity over efficiency? then
You’re “not aligned.”;If you still believe in purpose beyond profit? then
You’re “unrealistic.”;And so, we all learn how to shrink. How to be useful without being real. How to smile while being mined.
But listen, something in us is starting to crack. The whisper from before? It’s louder now.
It’s reminding us that labour wasn’t always a leash. That our forefathers worked, yes, but their work didn’t cost them themselves.
They made. They healed. They grew.
They didn’t clock in. They showed up with their whole beings.
Perhaps the task now is not just to survive the system but to unlearn it.
To ask: What was stolen from our hands when they called it progress?
And what can we take back, not just in land, but in meaning?
Because we weren’t born to be tools.
We were born to build.