Sometime in February 2000, I left my residence which was located at Cite Sipress 2 in Dakar, the capital of Senegal, to do some business at Place de la Independence in the centre of town. On completion of my mission, I requested of my driver to take me on a cruise around different parts of the city since I wasn't in a rush to get back home.
We drove through some very plush high-end areas like "Point E", "Mermoz" and "Almade" where the cheapest property is valued at $3,000,000 (three million dollars). The experience was quite soul-inspiring but short-lived as suddenly, in sharp contrast to the heavenly-like ride through the well-paved streets of the rich, famous, powerful and mighty, I began experiencing what for a moment I thought was a trance, a grace to grass experience.To give it a more appropriate description, from heaven to hell experience.
At this stage, my mind, heart and emotions were locked up and battling in two sharply contrasting worlds. Two totally different lifestyles and standards of living by a people bonded by a common identity in one city and one nation under the same God.
One group, highly elitist and swimming in opulence, and also benefiting from government largesse and really glowing in vulgar abundance, and sadly the other group left to their fate of a harsh life. One group of citizens were dreaming and living a life in paradise, pursuing mega stuff without sweat, and the other dreaming of a daily struggle for survival.
My focus was instantly on the latter, who were living under extremely harsh conditions. For them, the daily struggle for survival outweighed the urge for all other freedoms and most had clearly adjusted interpretation of their situation they found themselves in, and the search for exit solutions to later wisdom and experience. My fragile heart was at this time, greased with compassion and sympathy, then progressed to a string of questions running through my mind with the "why question" featuring prominently. Eventually, I slipped into intense anger at the political class. "Evil and Wickedness" were the only words that summed it all. What a political shame. I couldn't take it any longer so requested my driver take me home, never uttering a word along the way.
At home, I cast my mind back to the various encounters I had with similar situations in different parts of the continent. This exercise drove me into a worse condition where I became like a man totally possessed by a spirit and gone crazy. I sat before my computer and began pouring out my heart into my most widely publicised article ever, "The Naked Reality About Africa". That was the turning point in my life, vowing to build a progressive collaborative collective to fight to exit this continental catastrophe.
Truth be told, our so-called sons of change, our political leaders, who on seeking the mandate of the poor masses to secure political power, promise a paradise on earth only to turnout to become political draculas, sucking the blood of the innocent and weak, who sacrificed their comforts to vote for them in long cues under harsh weather conditions. They are not considered enlightened and respected in the civilized global political paradise, and will never be if they do not change to putting themselves on a slimming diet and also purge their foul mouths of dead political slogans which are insulting, offer nothing and a disgrace not only to themselves, but to all Africans who are universally judged by the words and deeds of their leaders.
Pathetically, the African leader by comparison is like the "Prodigal Son" who despises all positive admonitions of competent, experienced professionals, intellectuals, knowledgeable economic actors, constructive political opponents, citizens in the diaspora whose remittances they are very happy to receive as an injection into the economy, and the dynamic youth constituency whose future they are toying with, only hypocritically and Nicodemously coming back to reasoning after a huge mess has been created at great cost to the state, and also bearing in mind, the lost time and the pain it takes to regain the lost; all in the name of stubbornness, arrogance, self-service and greed. Most African citizens fast losing hope and want to embrace a change such as its past partner, Russia did with the West.
It sometimes takes excessive pains and psychological shame to demolish all pillars of an evil ideology but for the sake of this and the subsequent generations, African leaders must assume responsibility to embark on the right political track, although with a very big sense of shame, if that will bring us the political grace in the future.
Hypocrisy has no longer any room in African politics, especially in a century when the world is holding hands in a common economic destination and the poor masses are neck-edge fed-up with the deceptive games that almost always result in a LOOT.
Truthfully, African leaders are not realistic and reliable in their endeavours. With pretence of loving the truth, they hate constructive criticism. They love to hear condemnation of the ills of colonialism and imperialism, which they support as the exportation of African talent, strength and intellect to distant lands. To a degree this accusation does not hold much water because Africa was not the only continent that was colonized. Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia were all once colonies of the imperialist, but have kept the past behind them and forged ahead without any blame shifting. Unpleasing as it was to sell our people to be exported, our ancestors who played the role of the middlemen were as equally guilty as the buyers and if anything, should be condemned as the Imperialist.
The hollow-minded and short-sighted African leader’s actions are self-serving and default in honouring their promises, without realising that life has an interesting way of catching up with you. The African political kingdom is divided, leaders against one another, in a world where age is a great value of ones experience, which in actuality is naive.
Evident was the Liberian crisis, when some African leaders, especially of the Economic Community of West African States made it public that Sgt. Samuel Doe's death could pave a way for peace. This does not only show that African leaders are short-sighted by their political nature, but are also secret and silent collaborators of the anarchy that took place in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Leaders of the betrayed continent shall not have anything to offer their nations, if they permit hypocrisy and partiality to take them hostage. The reflection of our leaders' actions stigmatize the African overseas, sometimes making it difficult to pride oneself as an African when the outside media portrays real and nasty conditions of Africans in their own continent of hell.
Africa, by the deeds of her destructive leaders, has lost track of her destiny. With our East Asian peers moving economically clockwise and becoming economic giants through hard work, constructive research and thinking, African leaders are wasting much time on boastful and irrelevant political litigations that offer their society nothing. Their actions and egotism have programmed the African economy anti clockwise, basing hopes on false convictions, and the fear of being accused by their hard-line disciples of becoming middle-liners.
The African leader should put in place a new sense of value, one that permits him to see beyond regional and continental frontiers, and one that makes him compassionate to the plight of the governed. As fathers of our beloved nations, they should place the interest of their nations on top of the agenda before theirs, and not to treat their nationals as second class citizens which indirectly is "black apartheid", which the people fought against.
Having attained independence in totality, the African continent is confronted with a new challenge to determine its future and destiny. We should stop the boasting of our independence in long coated speeches, but should accept the fact that it is only the beginning of a new reconstruction that calls for the collective participation of all, irrespective of ones' location or influence in the society. The maxim "I am black and proud" shall forever remain a "fruitless" illusion, if we are unable to prove to the outside world that we indeed have something to be proud of. My heart is not dispirited in a strange land when I encounter racism. Racism is not new to me. It exists even in Africa where tribesmen of the leader exert tribal superiority over other tribes of the same nationality. Why therefore must I condemn racism of two different colours?
The outflow of Africans to foreign lands, is a confirmation that Africans are now feeling the heat of their living hell created by their leaders handiwork. The Africans dream and hope for a positive future will forever remain incomplete, if the decayed and corrupt order do not feel the need for a revolutionary change, one that despises violence and vindictiveness. A system that with a spotless conscience embraces innovative transformation.
Africa, in my perception, has largely been ruled by unintelligent political black vultures, who perching on leafless trees claim to see all corners of the world, but ironically and stupidly cannot see the bug or flea stuck in the rim of its eyes. The unintelligence of our leadership comes under scrutiny, especially in a situation where the untutored leaders try to philosophize their dead points by giving them a sense of rationality, which in actuality is not practicable.
Unnecessary condemnation of the Imperialist past is time consuming. Had this time and energy been redirected to solving a problem, it would have brought home some lucrative results.
The African population overseas are frustrated and ashamed of their leaders, and many share the common idea and thought that they have betrayed the African people. Some Africans who have acquired a little capital and are ready to come home to help, are fearful and suspicious of their homeland's political and social systems. They feel at home on a foreign land, rather than go home to witness the bitter enslavement of the families whom they have left behind and are pitifully awaiting for their time to die and enter the new world of the unknown. The misery of Africa which changes not for better but for worse is the intentional work of our leaders who are spiritually sick of corruption and crimes, enriching themselves more than leaders of the advanced world. Africa indeed has an endless journey riddled with sorrows to embark on.
The absence of revolutionary innovations, and the African leaders refusal to give way to positive intelligence to fuel the continent's machine of development is a depiction of the physical hell already preached by the ancient prophets. The rate of infant and youth mortality is extremely high, with children dying of treatable diseases in the developed world. In times when the strongest nations are cutting costs to boost their economies, the African leader is sinking into "Profligate Spending", utter madness.
The practice of hounding all who disagree with their political direction, if not discontinued shall forever plunge Africa in a state of anarchy, resulting in genocide evident in the "Black Holocaust of Rwanda." The African public should guard against the evil campaigns of their evil saviours who for their personal ambitions and interest care little about the people, even if it calls for their decimation to make their black dreams come to reality.
Truthfully Africa's political stability will continue to be shaky if politicians do not come to power legitimately and constitutionally. Funnily, the uncertainties of African politics makes it tough to distinguish between armed robbers and some political actors who inflict pain and terrorize the public all in the guise of enriching themselves at public expense. Both are armed criminals.The poor people of Africa with a weak perception of their hidden objectives fail to realize this but embrace their promises later to become victims of a system they once hailed. Africans need a civil democratic revolution, a non-violent change, a popular demand that the African leader vomits when he swallows the "pill of change."
In a nutshell, the African head of state is not the "icon of change" he claims to be, but a cunning
dictatorial apostle of Hitler in disguise, who only sees oppression as the potent measure of suppressing dissent against his headship of gangster collusive looting. In my point of view, this is a negative measure of correction and leads the struggling economies of Africa no where.
Africa's economic woes and atmosphere of political instabilities was not wrought by the colonialist, but to the highest degree by the incompetent, inefficient, irresponsible and corrupt leaders who have sucked all energy from mother Africa without any hope of resuscitation or revival, giving room to despair and frustration replacing hope. Skeptical and pessimistic Africans everywhere have lost their little hope in mother Africa's revival from her unconsciousness, having been punched so much by her sons of change.
But with a dynamic and new thinking constituency of the new generation stock out there, fighting with relevant knowledge, character of integrity, steely determination, courage, and the necessary dare for an identity change, a new direction and revolutionary transformation, there is hope for the future. It is the forceful rise of the new Africa. Yes we can!!
God Bless Africa
Charles Sam, Golden Future Promotions, Accra - Ghana Tel : +233 (0) 544144551 goldnfutureafrica@gmail.com Facebook : "Charles A.Sam Gfp" or "Charles Sam Gfp"
Note: This essay of mine was published in 2003 but I feel the matters scripted therein are still real on the continent today.
