A turning point of record proportions is billed to usher Africa from yesteryear ravages to a remastered dispensation of peace, progress and positive growth.
There is a fresh upsurge of optimism that Africa is set to overturn conditions that have short supplied its epic quest for better days and relocate from the backyard of civilisation to a pre-eminent station in international affairs.
The African Dream at High Tide
Impassioned campaigns for a mass crossover to destiny are fermenting across Africa. There is a joint effort among statesmen, media practitioners, authors, academics, artists, pressure groups and clergymen to awaken our continent to the incredible possibilities at its disposal.
It is pertinent from the outset, though, to inquire from the elites and the rank and file of our populace a question that is long overdue: Can we fail to see that the whole discourse is for about a better Africa is old wine in new wineskins?
Hindsight to the continent’s progress through history, against the base residues of slavery, imperialism and post-colonial impediment conveys a graphic depiction of our people’s determination to press against the manifold array of problems militating against the continent’s pursuit of triumph.
The current flare of optimism is not without precedent. It dates as far as the preliminary phases of the decolonization campaign when Afrocentric proponents of a new era stepped up in arms against the colonial scourge.
These firebrand exponents of widescale reform who flighted sunny forecasts of a glorious dispensation across the threshold of independence. They called time on Africa’s anguish and tribulation, saddled on the continent by long years of slavery, subjugation and servitude.
Great expectations ran viral as Pan-Africanist luminaries such as Kwame Nkrumah, Marcus Garvey, Edmund Blyden, Jomo Kenyatta and Julius Nyerere articulated Africa’s eventual tap into the dream dispensation through the ‘master key’ of self-government.
Patrice Lumumba, that grand partriach of African renaissance signifies this consciousness: “We have long suffered and today we want to breathe the air of freedom. The Creator has given us this share of the earth that goes in the name of the African continent; it belongs to us and we are its only masters. It is our right to make this continent a continent of justice, law and peace.
“We wish to bid farewell to the rule of slvery and bastardization that has so severely wronged us.”
The founding premier of independent Congo, who had a shortlived tenure in office, was survived by his articulate renditions of the African Dream:
“Despite the boundaries that separate us, despite our ethnic differences, we have the same soul plunged day and night night in anguish, the same desire to make this African continent a free and happy continent that has rid itself of unrest and of fear and of any sort of colonialist domination.
“The aspiration of colonized and enslaved people are everywhere the same. The common goal is the liberation of Africa from the colonialist yoke.
Kwame Nkrumah, the foremost exponent of Pan-Africanism and first leader of black Africa had these concerns to register:
“We have too long been victims of foreign domination. For too long we have had no say in the manner our own affairs are run or in deciding our own destinies. Now the times have changed and today we are masters of our own fate.”
Nkrumah pledged to avail his country’s nascent autonomy towards the upgrading of his people’s condition. He outlined the master plan to abolish, poverty, disease and ignorance, setting a standard for all subsequent leaders who were to echo this legendary election promise hook, line and sinker.
“We shall measure our progress by the improvement in the the health of our people; by the number of children in school and by the quality of the education and by the availability of water and electricity in our towns and villages and by the happiness which our people take in being able to manage their own affairs. The welfare of our people is our chief pride and it is by this that my government will ask to be judged.”
Nkrumah affirmed with a note of optimism that : “It is therefore patent that we in Africa have the resources present and potential for creating this kind of society.”
Thus high soared the tide of expectation across the region and all subsequent administrations have sought to espouse it.
Things Fall Apart
Going by this billing, one would expect Africa to be an epitome of positive transformation 70 years after Lumumba. Far from it!
Africa is yet to shed defrock its dark continent tag, not to mentioned that she has found herself immersed in even greater mess. The ascent to better days has derailed and Africa is gravitating deeper into the miry bog.
Frustrations show up at every turn, and the ‘master key’ of self-government has proved a hoax and multitudes gasping for the air of freedom have come to equate their new leaders with colonial taskmasters. A view has run viral that oppression has merely changed hands from white to black. Charles Mungoshi notes in
Walking Still that customs and costumes have changed but the conditions are still the same.
The new stock of leaders has abdicated from confronting generational problems and given in to further problems. The insistence on African solutions for African problems, while bearing the marks of an enlighten cause has not yielded anything tangible.
Sourcing help from offshore resorts has also proved a compromised recourse as the relations entered are slanted to Africa’s disadvantage and fraught with double standards. As long as Africa remains stuck at the base of the geopolitical pyramid she is not likely to register a significant presence on the global scene.
Ariston Chambati, Zimbabwe’s late finance minister recounted an exchange he had with Henry Kissinger on the sidelines of a United Nations Summit. The latter had presented a report outlining the dynamics of world economies – except Africa. Chambati was offended and confronted Kissinger over the matter. Kissinger declined to respond and simply answered: “I rest my case.”
culled from
mschavar.wordpress.com
