The just concluded meeting of the East African Community (EAC) heads of state in Arusha Tanzania reached a milestone. South Sudan was officially admitted to the EAC. This is a good move shall it be expanded to the reunification but not integration. African does not need or deserve to be integrated. Instead, it needs and deserves to be reunited so that it could become more powerful; and thereby play an importantly respectable role in world affairs. So, we urge our leaders to avoid tunnel vision by clinging to presidency and petty nationhood as it currently is. They must show the rest of Africa how things are done vis-à-vis the reunification of Africa.
Although our leaders do not want to face this reality, Africa was partitioned and demarcated as a tactic of weakening it so as to be colonized forever. We pride ourselves that we are independent. Yet still, we live on begging. African countries are becoming their own obstacle due to thinking and working severally; and due to the resource Africa is endowed with, we are not supposed to live by begging. Every country is trying to protect its interests. To me, there is any meaningful and big interest as Africa. African countries are in a self-imposed cul de sac wantonly and pointlessly. Many African countries like to trade with non-African countries as they shy away from other African countries. Once you trade, say, with China, you create job and wealth for Chinese workers by denying the same from you brothers and sisters Africans. This can only be stopped through fully and totally reunification of Africa. Historically speaking, Africans had never lived depending on begging or handouts from the West before 1884. Why can’t we take it back to this glorious time?
We are now calling ourselves Burundians, Kenyans, Rwandans, South Sudanese and Ugandans. Again, we know that we did not choose to be. Instead, in 1884 in Berlin Germany, colonial monsters partitioned and demarcated Africa to suit their interests not ours. This is the fact based on our history. God creates us Africans but the colonial monsters made as Cameroonians, Nigerians, Tanzanians and whatnot so as to perpetually exploit us. We know this for a fact; but we don’t want to accept it and work on it to emancipate ourselves a people. Again, who is now preventing us from reunifying Africa to the very tune it was before 1884?
United we stand. Divided we fall. It is this simple. I think, over fifty years of our so-called independence that has always made us dependent on our colonial monsters would have taught us a lesson. We are forced to carry passports in Africa as if we are travelling to America Asia or Europe! Do Africans need to carry these bloody passports when traveling in their country that was divided by colonial monsters so as to weaken their country for exploitation and degradation through these current tiny countries Africa has? How can a person seek permission to live in any room of his or her house? Is it not internalizing colonial-demarcated borders or colonialism itself that is committed by Africans themselves in the name of sovereignty which also was invented by the same monsters in Westphalia Germany in 1648? Here are we now! Aren’t we discriminating against each other based on our colonial superimposed fake nationalities? Aren’t we attacking one another based on xenophobic fears such as what has been happening in South Africa whose freedom came at the expenses of many African countries that offered to help her?
Although we tend to blame our colonial monsters–which is our right to do–for all of our miseries, we, so, too, need to look at ourselves in order to do justice to ourselves. What have our people done to force such bêtes noirs in power almost in all African countries out of their offices that they have turned into their private estates? Aren’t we the part of the crime or accomplices? We need to put our own house in order; and now the ball is in our court. Blaming and keeping mum won’t do us good.
Let us challenge the status quo by embarking on true emancipation based on the reunification of Africa. Let us take this less traveled road based on facing the reality as a people desiring to live well just like others. Blame games, pretense, and lamenting have not helped us; and won’t help us either. We need to understand the complexities and size of the encounter of reunifying Africa; and work on them seriously if we need to live like decent and upright humans. We have been under the so-called our own governments formed by Africans. However, the situation has worsened days by days. Are these governments truly ours or theirs? We need to deconstruct and reconstruct everything we achieved since independence that led to our dependence and uselessness before other nations. We need to challenge the meta narrative of the current political dispensation which is full of fabrications, injustice and imperialism. Africa needs to do something Chinese and others who are now on top of the world did. Why should Africa become stagnant while those she acquired freedom with are running while we sit down? We need to fight corruption by the high and the mighty and those they use to rob us. We need to be true to ourselves to see to it that the dream of reunifying Africa becomes a reality. Such bold move will help us to avert conspiring with our tormentors or betraying one another given that our vision will be one, to see Africa reunited. We need to look beyond our stomachs and noses. There is life after we are gone. This is how it has been. It will always be like that. If tiny creatures like termites with their magnificent high-rise buildings–in spite of having small craniums and tiny brains–can still think about tomorrow, why can’t we who are gifted with such huge craniums and big brains? Don’t ants build skyscrapers? Don’t bees store honey for the use of tomorrow? Don’t beavers store their food in summer so as to use them in winter?
Suffice it to say, the EAC should aim higher by envisaging the unification of all members to form one big country known as the EAC or whatever they will settle for. We are tired of being slaves in our continent. We are tired of being curtailed to move in our own continent that used to be a country known as Africa. We are tired of purchasing weapons for the fear of our own brothers and sisters in our neighbourhood. We are tired of serving and servicing colonial interests those who partitioned, divided and demarcated Africa envisaged for our own peril. The fool is the one who is bitten twice in the same hole. East Africa countries unite instead of integrating. I talked the importance of the reunification of Africa in my new book (480 pages) that came out in December last year AFRICA REUNITE or PERISH published by Langaa RPCIG, Cameroon.
No comments:
Post a Comment