I AM PROVOKED!

I am here thinking, could there be something on the subject of being a proper Pan African that I missed in history class? I am at a loss, because I know I love my continent. I have my collection of African body-wears, head-wears, chokers, wristlets and home decorations, I read about His Imperial Majesty, Mandela, Nkrumah, Malcolm, Marley, Marcus et al, and I believe I overstand the concepts of Swahili’s ‘Umoja’ and South Africa’s ‘Ubuntu’.

As a matter of fact, for Africa, I can steal the Lincoln Memorial right under America’s nose,  if that is what it should take to demonstrate my love; no jokes!

BUT REALLY, I don’t know where all these judgments and conspiracies are coming from; EH? Sometimes I think it is a case of unprovoked ‘disgust’, but other times I believe it is sheer ‘Intellectual-masturbation’ by some naively optimistic 'Kumbaya' singing 'Black-Redeemers'. Well! What can I say, that’s what it is apparently. Some of us have this uncontrollable weakness to make ourselves feel like we know something that others don't.

You see, even the babe-in-arms knows that we [Africans] have a history of being taken advantage of, that’s presently a tired-arse notion. Maybe the questions we should be asking ourselves now, and with a view to not doing them again are:  Weren’t we the very ones who chose to make the ‘less’ of our capacity to tolerate all these [choose an appropriate noun]? How did we allow ‘them’ to ‘allegedly’ push Africa into a land of constant genocides and tribal battles; didn’t they say here is where civilisation began? Wasn’t it our own forefathers who played part in the selling and buying of our forefathers into slavery?

Who do you see fighting over natural resources; and instead of being inventive about them, we hand them over to the ‘others’ in exchange for armaments, to kill our own? Why did we allow ourselves to be forced into such lack of cooperation? Who is assisting these aid organisations into depicting Africa as the hell of this world; just to secure some project funding that is not even bigger than an ‘offering-plate’? When are we going to get inspired and motivated to turn away from living on hand-outs, a chunk of which end up in some CEO’s bank account? What stops us from creating our own African news, rather than having ‘reliable’ African news from Atlanta, Paris or London?

 

I wrote about my pitiless road journey to and from Burkina Faso the other day on Facebook, and how I was made to pay ‘000s of CFA Francs just to cross some checkpoint in Mali, what stops ECOWAS from eliminating all those flamboyant borders? What stops our intellectuals and our engineers in particular to revise our endogenous systems; to renounce those over-sized dinner suits and massive offices and get down to tangible business?

Which people do you hear complaining about the ‘pull-him-down’ (PHD) syndrome or the 'crab mentality’ the most, I mean that case where if one of us begins to move slowly out, one or more other people will pull us back down to prevent our break out? When are we going to do things differently; because apparently all these march pasts and carnivals that we do on our avenues, light-heartedly chanting, dancing and jiggling all day, in commemoration of some World 'it doesn't matter what day'; wearing straight-jeans and loud T-Shirts bearing slogans that are neither here nor there, have not been of much success?  

You see, I can go on with the rhetorical questions till I exceed the speed of light, but to cut an already long story short, “WHERE THERE IS NO ENEMY WITHIN, THE ENEMIES OUTSIDE CANNOT HURT US” - I don’t know who said that but I believe. AND PLEASE I do not mean to offend anyone, this piece is just an opinion and it can be as wrong as: ‘You Ruv Me’ [smiling and singing 'one love']