Are We Ready as Youths to Save the Damaged Face of Africa?
6 min readBy Tito Awen Bol, Eldoret, Kenya
April 7, 2016 (SSB) — Looking at all ends of Africa from the Horn of Africa to the Maghreb and from the Suez Canal to the Port of Good Hope in the far South; the continent is mired and tarnished by the dirty egos of tribalism, ethnicity, nepotism, cronyism and worse of all by corruption and bad governance from the kleptocrats of cronies and dictators who believe not in meritocracy. Wars are consuming the continent in length at all angles. Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, Libya and South Sudan are the living examples of Countries whose people are suffering while the leaders are scrambling for who and how to control resources and wealth.
Corruption is rocking the continent at all corners, from Nairobi to Abuja and from Accra to Johannesburg; there are latest cases that can represent the vice. Selective justice is the rule of the game in African judiciary services; Cairo, Tripoli and Khartoum stand a better chance of representing their political peers. Media and freedom of expression is crippled everyday; Eritrea, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Uganda are the chief examples in this category of political hell. Our ruling elites are always busy modifying the constitutions to suit them; fresh cases at hand are seen in Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo and boringly in Uganda and Zimbabwe.
Dishonesty and political insincerity keep forcing the oppositions to dispute the election results before the results are even out; and indeed as a result, African opposition forces are used to disputing any outcome of election even if they loss.
Sovereignty losses its meaning in this part of the world-Africa, every Country keeps yapping…my neck, my foot; we are sovereign state and yet cannot afford to feed its population nor it stop the dependency on foreign Aide. I agree with the former World Bank employer-the Author of Dead Aide, Dambisa Maiyo from Zambia who suggested the stoppage of foreign aid to Africa. Hope is deeming off from African woman, child and elderly each day; and yet we keep voting what we called “our governments.” Question keep ringing in my mind daily “have we sent away foreign colonialists for local colonialists or we got rid of colonialists and we remained with colonialism?’’
Yes, colonialists are gone and we cannot feed our hungry population like in Zimbabwe though “whites’ Farms” were taken over by Africans, colonialists are gone and we cannot have political system of our own nor we fully apply the system of the former colonialists to the letter, yes they are gone and we still depend on their foreign aides and we curse them when they ask us to account for their aides.
Any African Country from independence, beginning from Egypt in 1922 to South Africa in 1994 (leave alone the independence from home colonialists like Ethiopians in Eritrea and Arabs in South Sudan then) was hoping for what they are yet to get and I doubt if they can be easily getting it-better life. The former liberators just differ immediately after independence and kill the people whom they claimed to have liberated; they kill them on ethnic or tribal basis, just read from colonial independences to the local independences as I termed it before. Or is George Orwell getting right in his Book-Animal Farm that “animals are equal and some animals are more equal?”
Why more equal after liberation and not during the struggle so that people can see how more equal they are in fighting the real enemy? Africa, Mistreatment from your own son is dreadfully worse than that of the stranger. Africa is mistreated by its own children and yet stands best to blame the Western Countries and Western Nations never came to stop us from developing our Countries, nor have they ever ask us not to feed our starving population. Western world’s politicians obey their constitutions unlike African leaders who ask their small ruling clique of sycophants for amendment of the constitutions as their terms are approaching an end.
Africa is the only continent whose sons and daughters collaborate with the foreigners to loot its resources. The only Continent where the states’ men and women are viewed as the “under-dogs’’ in favor of the true enemies of the state/nation. Africa is the only part of the globe whose leaders are voted and remain in hiding from the voters (constituents) and only come back to bribe the voters in the fifth year and go back to hiding for five more years. The only continent whose youths never wanted to know their roles in development or intentionally accepted to jump into the froth of tribalism, ethnicity, nepotism, cronyism and corruption leaving the poor who set their hope on them swimming still in the unending York of poverty.
It perplexed me and I keep wondering if we are ready as youths to save the tainted image of Africa. Youths are involved in tribalizing and ethnicizing their “little politics” and this can beat the understanding of the few Africanists if indeed we are heading to the end of Africa or not. Or is it true that the beginning of the ‘’end of the world” will begin with us. Universities are where the future is planned and planted into the young people that will carry the better part of the hope to the next generation.
Simply, look at how we perceive corruption today, instead of viewing it as a vice that need to be disowned, curse and thrown to the dustbin or to the owner-the Devil, we perceive it normal and part of success. Students’ leaderships and participation are tribalized, ethnized and most recently, regionized and religionized in every academic institution in Africa, go to South Africa, go to Uganda, go to Sudan, South Sudan, Kenya, Senegal , Ivory Coast, Ghana, Algeria, Nigeria etc, the order of students’ politics is tribal, ethnic or religious blocks. Where is Africa heading? All these vices should be expunged and pronounced past tenses in the continent.
By the way, is the ideology of Pan Africanism dead or the characters behind it are all dead? Is African Union serious about the Pan Africanism? Are the African scholars seeing what is happening with us youths? How about just the spirits of founding fathers like Khwama Nkrumah, Ustaz/Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Col.Abdel Nasir, Patrick Lumumba, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, Nelson Mandela, Dr.John Garang etc, did they forget to look at the fire burning the continent to whole? Do our scholars know that we will fail terribly more than their current age-mates in political arena?
Something needs to be done by African Union through African scholars to save the future of Africa through young people at Universities. Just talking ill of young people at random during lectures while you know the causes cannot save us and Africa as a continent. There is need to incorporate some serious programmes in academic lives around all African Universities.
Author is a South Sudanese student taking Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from School of Agriculture and Biotechnology, University of Eldoret; and can be reached at awenbol2007@yahoo.com
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