Logical Considerations 47
Wars in faraway lands have tended to take our attention from real issues in our own backyards. Like in the two world wars, Africans, under colonial rule, were made to partially forget, or suspend their anti-colonial wars, and were shipped away to fight in Europe. Many never returned.
Again, today — if one goes by what you hear in the news or/and social media — Africans say little or nothing about what is happening on the continent. News about Ukraine, Russia and NATO has pulled everyone’s attention like a huge magnet. Within no time, we have forgotten about the civil war in the Horn and the terrorist attack on northern Mozambique. The strife in Zimbabwe. And skirmishes in Alexandra.
Yet still, no one says much about, or anything at all, about the Nigerian government forces’ attack on the people of Biafra. An act which risks to plunge the country into another civil war. In 1967 over one million people died in that land, sparking ethnic hatred that still plagues that part of Africa.
Very senseless things that don’t move us anywhere.
What is startling is that with all that is happening, the pan African body, African Union (AU) is saying nothing in terms of mediation, or some utterance of concern over these occurences.
The weakness of AU in such cases emanates from the non-interference policy African countries have among themselves. To the detriment of their own countries. For, it means Africans can massacre themselves while others are watching, and then talk about how the killings were bad, only after the fact.
Such killings happened in Rwanda in the not-so-distant past! Again, the massacre that claimed more than one million people, was a result of ethnic hatred.
Africans simply hate one another. Even where it seems there is harmony, we can safely conclude that that quiet is a veneer for a dormant, brewing war. It can take a mere hello in a different language, or someone say I don’t like the way you look, and the next thing what follows machetes and sticks and stones and guns will fill the streets where Africans spill blood. Their own blood!
We hate one another such that foreign people use us to exploit our resource wealth. It never dawns on us that our natural resources are getting depleted without us ever enjoying them. It does not happen to us that we have to bring our heads together and protect what is left of the wealth for posterity. We are infecting our children with this hatred and stupidity, making it difficult for them to rise to greatness.
But how can they, when their supposed role models behave like lower animals who cannot distinguish between good and bad?
How will we ever expect the children of Africa to learn about nationalism and Pan-Africanism when these concepts remain only sweet-sounding words, and preserves of intellectual debate? How would they grow into a climate where they would hoist the flag of a United Africa with pride, when all they grow to know is that my group is better than that group, and in order for me to live, I must exterminate that group? And not together we can live and conquer the world to create a harmonious existence?
African leaders are failing us; the AU is failing us; we are all failing Africa. Africa is failing its children. In the end, Africa is failing her own products — humanity.
We need a sensible leadership sensitive to the needs of Africa. Unfortunately, the current African leadership is shortsighted. It is a leadership that sees as far as their stomachs. It is a leadership that has friends in faraway lands, friends that make it possible for it to be comfortable, even if it takes the whole country to suffer. It is a leadership in whom nationalism and pan Africanism are alien words.
Indeed, in this leadership, there is no hope for pan Africanism. It is in our everyday that we see their disarticulated actions towards the continent that they are a captured leadership. Captured by colonialism and liberalism to keep our economic development hostage.
If we are to forge ahead as a people we need to focus on what is happening around us, to arrest a situation that can turn disastrous. We need to concentrate on our self-love. We need to harness leadership that will love Africa and her people. We urgently need true representatives of Pan Africanism — body, mind and soul.
Pan Africanism remains our salvation, only if we can nurture brave, selfless and Africa-focused leaders. With such leaders, we can act quickly to end crises in Biafra, Mozambique, the Horn, Alexandra and other parts. We can save ourselves from ourselves, from our stupidity, from our hatred. From declaring war against ourselves!
It is only Pan Africanism that remains logical for Africa’s renewal. It is Pan Africanism that is supreme for the continent to be reborn. It is Pan Africanism that will make Africans to make sense, to themselves and to the world!
And through Pan Africanism, we can always remember Africa. And we MUST REMEMBER Africa! For it is through Pan Africanism that we can see liberation. Finally…