WE ARE OUR OWN WORST ENEMIES

Africa is for Africans, right? Well, that’s the general assumption – I call it an assumption because ever since the advent of colonialism, the colonizers have owned large chunks of the motherland in one way or other. French colonies are required to keep only 15% of their national reserves in their countries, with 85% kept in France. Britain wants to loan artifacts its representatives stole from Ethiopia back to the owners. South Africa’s economy is still predominantly driven by the whites. East Africa (particularly Kenya and Uganda) is selling off pieces of itself to China through national projects that generate national debt, in the name of development. And then there is the foreign aid monster. Sigh.

One would expect that, as an African living decades into the post colonial era, and with all the resources available to us, we would be more aware of how to not sell bits of our motherland back to the colonizers with our own blood and sweat, after they took our ancestors first then took our land and minerals. One would think that being an African living in Africa would get you preferential treatment but ironically it’s the whites getting this preferential treatment. It’s in the smallest of things. When Africans are expatriated to the West, they are labeled immigrants. Doesn’t matter whether you are developing a cure for cancer, designing spaceships or cleaning toilets in a high school – you are an immigrant. Under qualified white people come to Africa to do the same jobs unemployed and sometimes overqualified Africans can do and they’re treated like kings, paid up to ten times the normal wage and called expatriates. You arrive at a restaurant at the same time as a white person, that person will get service before you do. Post colonial stress disorder or some colonial version of Stockholm Syndrome, I guess.

Based on these observations, as Africans we are our biggest enemies and oppressors. We have the resources and capacity to develop Africa as Africans, but first we need to stop discriminating against each other. On tribal basis, level of education, economic standing. Life originated in Africa, as its occupants and rightful heirs its is time to reclaim our home and make it suitable for us as Africans. Even our leaders must cease with their political rhetoric and the “its our turn to eat” mentality and actually do what they were chosen to do – lead. The backroom dealing, insatiable and unpunished corruption, nepotism and greed are eating away at all our potential from the inside out. Why must the most brilliant African minds be enticed from home by an attractive lifestyle enriching the colonizers’ homes? We must reinvest in Africa, for Africans! If we see each other as brethren first before anything else, we stand a chance of going further ahead of the world at large. Perhaps we need a benevolent dictator like Paul Kagame; what he has helped Rwanda achieve after the 1994 genocide is nothing short of astounding. Surely Black Panther should have taught us the importance of African unity by now; the divide and rule method is a colonial tool.