Page 28 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 16

Leadership

made for personal preservation.
No matter how many safe spaces
one builds, without dealing with the
issues in society, those spaces will be
encroached on by the same corrupt
system that caused the person or
group of people to build them, and
those spaces will be destroyed. At
some point in one’s life, one must
decide to deal with the uncom-
fortable situations in one’s life and
society that one knows are absolute-
ly wrong and to teach their children
the way to go, praying that they will
be able to find the courage to live We must be much more committed worthy of their own calling. Let
right and deal with issues, instead of than they are to turn things around, not the stench of our complacency
shrinking back from them. because the truth is that things will become the fragrance that lingers as
only change the moment we decide the memory of our own generation
It’s our responsibility to do better as individuals. The as our children are forced to clean
The root cause of this might not moment that we understand that we up our mess, and the messes of
be entirely our fault, but it is our deserve better and that we are going those who came before us – or even
responsibility to deal with these to live better, because we know and worse, add to the stench through
demons in our lifetime and to show understand our worth. The moment their own madness that we failed to
our children how it is done so that that we realize that if we don’t do deal with. Let ours be the generation
they do not allow these things to the changing, our children do not that says, “Enough!”
reemerge or remain in their day. stand a chance at either recognizing
This is the garbage that we have to evil, knowing how to overcome it or
deal with. We cannot leave it to our even having the will to do so. That
children to clean up this mess of an moment of realization and under-
evil, totalitarian, wasteful, excessive- standing will require an accompany-
ly consumerist, greedy and selfish ing commitment made at heart level
society. We have to face the monster of the individual, one that cannot
that we allowed to thrive in our own be rescinded. A commitment to do
backyard instead of destroying it what is needful to change the envi-
while we had the chance to, and we ronment around you, around your
have to do it now. community and around your family.

There is no more room left for us to One that disallows the negative en-
blame the government, the slavers, vironment that we had empowered
the colonialists, the neo-imperial- with our complacency to continue
ists, the traitors in our midst who to exist, let alone to thrive. We must
have bullied us and the world with turn and face our children and show
serious wickedness. They are not them a better world than the one
interested in doing things differently. they have been exposed to, to let
They believe they have found a way them know that much of what goes
that works and they have neither on around them is as a result of our
desire nor inclination to give up own failures to deal and to show
their methods. In fact, they are busy them how to approach change so
training acolytes who will carry that they too can be armed for the
on with their dastardly deeds and future that lies ahead of them.
plans, generation upon generation to Let us not leave the poo of our
come. That’s how committed they own insufficiencies to hinder the
are to these evils. next generation’s efforts to live lives

28 | we tell the true afrikan story