Page 99 - A People Called Afrika

NeoColonization

framed for inclusion in the Charter remain window dressing
in the face of a fractured and half-hearted opposition to the
forces working against true Afrikan liberty. Member states of
the African Union demonstrate their desire and willingness
to sign pacts and covenants with external parties, for their
own selfish interests, and to remain silent when their mem-
bers are attacked and destroyed by external forces. They turn
their faces away or hide under their desks or beds when voices
that are opposed to those of the funders speak up against the
injustices that are so pervasive even today and they do away
with those who would compromise their access to funds and
other provisions from their de facto masters… and all this they
do to the detriment of Afrika’s common unity and strength.

Why should this be so? Wouldn’t a people who had experi-
enced the horrors of slavery and colonialism want to be com-
pletely free from those who had treated them so unjustly? The
realities of the pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial period
include: brutality, maiming of innocent people, murders, arbi-
trary arrests, mandatory registrations and censuses of persons,
forced use of identification documents, spying, communal
imprisonment in camps, torture and forced separation from
families either through being compelled to leave home or im-
plementation of administrative borders (a new form of prison
camp), blatant and outright theft of property and so on. If it
were you, wouldn’t you want to be free from the influence,
authority, manipulations, economic and political control of
the people who did this to you? One would certainly think so.

Then why did not the ‘new leaders’ of Afrika push with ev-
erything in their might towards a path of true liberty and vig-
orously push away from what the colonialists did? Why did

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