Aaron Gono
“We are determined to create a union of Africans. In a very real sense, our continent is unmade; it still awaits its creation and its creators.”Kedamawi Haile Selassie
May 25, 1963
Organization of African Unity
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Was going through some chats in a reggae music group l am a member. And l asked myself repeatedly, Emperor Haile Sellasie’s dream of a prosperous Africa way back in 1963. Still to date, Africa is much worse than the Emperor’s dreams.
The current crop of African leaders are not yet prepared to take Africa to the levels dreamt of by the late Kwame Nkrumah, Emperor Sellasie, Muamar Kaddafi, Julius Nyerere, Kenneth Kaunda, Thomas Sankara, Robert Mugabe, Samora Machel, Steve Biko, Walter Sisulu and Govan Mbeki.
Was prompted to visit again this topic by the way European leaders are jointly tackling the tariff issue created by Donald Trump. The American president as a businessman is experimenting on something called the ” trade war.” He assumes that, by doing so America will regain the glitter and glamour it lost to China.
America wants to produce and bully everybody who crosses its trade paths. In actual fact it wants to own and control everything on this earth. And on its side, it is financially sound and militarily dangerous. It possesses all dangerous weapons which it denies countries like Iran and North Korea to own.
Countries owning these weapons are only Caucasians ones, France, Britain, America, Russia etc who consider themselves more responsible in handling them and know how properly to put them into use. It is said North Korea and Israel also possess them. But these two countries are very radical and dangerous to challenge. They both take no prisoners.
No African country have them, because the continent is run by tin pot dictators who abuse power, according to them. So Trump to make the world according to him, he introduced the trade war. Tariffs are made to protect a country’s economic hub. But the American ones are a tool of coercion aimed to instill fear and the Big Brother gospel.
African leaders are busy approaching Trump one by one, ostensibly promising him rare earth minerals. I am just thinking loudly. The African Union headquarters is in Ethiopia, where African economic and finance ministers must meet and collectively move forward. We are not doing that as the African continent.
Every infrastructure which Emperor Sellasie was dreaming of, is being disbanded daily in the continent. The beacon of hope, South Africa is also following suit. But South Africa’s problems are not home grown, they are being implanted by the fascists. Some call them the right wingers in the west, they are determined to destroy anything that make Africa great.
Almost every African country was booming shortly after its independence. Only to show signs of distress and recession some ten or so years after. All their urban infrastructure began to crumble and showing signs of decay. Some blame the decline on the movement of people from rural to urban, some blame poor urban planning and others as the norm blame city fathers for ignoring obvious signs of dilapidation.
Some blame the dirty politics in Africa, where our leaders do not separate party and government business. They combine the two to consolidate power. The current chaos in the world also worsens Africa’s predicament. African leaders are deliberately avoiding to make their voices heard. This situation enables them to account to nobody.
So Emperor Sellasie’s dream will never come to fruition, where he thought Africa will one day shape the world. Young populist leaders are emerging in Africa, in South Africa we have Herman Mashaba known for his hatred of the the so-called foreigners.
He garners votes from his myopic followers because of this rhetoric speeches. Instead of uniting Africa, it is following the fascist way of eugenic sampling. It is now more divided than ever. This can be noticed from its failure to fix the DRC.
