Page 93 - Msingi Afrika Magazine Issue 16

Leadership

You were high on the euphoria of between. Maybe if your family was brothers-at-arms in order to secure
the conquests of the Afrikan free- opposed to it, you fought against for themselves a pedestal that you
dom fighters who secured a type of the system, if your family was for it, guarded with all your strength and
victory that allowed you the room you defended the system and if your might. They clearly were the bigger
to do all these things – you entered family was somewhere in between, pawns in the shelves of the colonial
a brave new world and you began you were trapped in fear, behind a pawn shop, even though the world
to build and defend the structures wire fence, manned by armed by thinks and calls them heroes. But
you found, because you were told to. white men or men who looked like they are not and will never be, for
Ignoring the cries of the freedom you. Or maybe you were a maverick history does not lie even if historic
fighters who knew the war was not who broke the mold and joined the books do.
over. Rejecting the appeals of your battle regardless of conditioning,
peers who understood what was but because you believed in some- Then you raised our generation to
really happening, “The fight is not thing greater. be ‘good’ citizens of our countries.
over, it’s all a trick to lull us into a Obedient to the governing author-
false sense of security!” But you be- Unwittingly or not, you were a part ities. Never questioning what we
lieved the words of your ‘founding of a greater war… and you still are. were told but trusting that they al-
fathers’ who told you that victory As the white man planned their ways had our best interests at heart.
had come and it was now time to strategic retreat, some of those of You told us to go to school and
put axe to grindstone and ‘build the the generation of the ‘founding fa- work hard and get a job. But as our
nation’. Diligently you set to work, thers’ agreed amongst themselves to elder brothers and sisters did this,
unaware that you had become mere form cliques to profit off the backs they found that there were no jobs.
pawns in a larger game that was of their brothers and sisters in the Your generation had been gifted the
being won by the neocolonialist aftermath of colonialism. Instead still warm, but now empty seats of
imperialists. Unaware, or unwilling of restoring things to the way that the colonizer and you still occupied
to ask, I often wonder to myself. they were – or as close enough as these seats and had not created new
Anyway, you built, using their they could – they chose to embrace ones. So now, no room was left for
templates, their knowledge, their the way of the imperialist and build the next people to come in and take
globalist masterplan… you built a according to the selfish and greedy their turn at building. Unless you
great, big, hulking prison system colonial capitalist approach. They had a ‘godfather’ in government,
across Afrika that– unbeknownst to chose to drag the majority of the you couldn’t get anywhere and you
you – was to contain your offspring. rest of you along in their plan, with- couldn’t get anything done. You
To become the system that prevent- out cluing you in to what was really said we were lazy, that we were not
ed them from fulfilling their great going on. You became their minions ‘trying hard enough’ and sent us
potential. Was to become the system and their pawns. You believed what back out there to hunt for oppor-
that shaped them into the minions the white man told you, that your tunities that barely existed so as
for the global system, to build it, lives before this were backward, not to embarrass you – and those
sustain it and protect it as you had limited and flawed and that if you of you who had money, sent our
the microcosm you so diligently did things ‘their way’ you could friends and peers overseas to study
worked on. Enthusiastically, you make things better. So, you worked and work and there they remained –
designed and implemented struc- hard all of your lives to make that because life back home was impossi-
ture after structure that resulted in happen. Some of you believed in ble without someone to grant them
a system that resembled nothing the dream you were sold and some access to jobs. You didn’t mind so
that your own parents and grand- of you quickly learned that the much, because of the dollars they
parents remembered. Trapped in dream was a lie and you were not were able to send back home.
the concentration camps of the working towards some glorious But, most of you didn’t see what
white man or living in the forests reality and they tried to warn you you should have seen back then –
hunted by their brethren or the and got arrested, shunned, ridiculed that the whole system was flawed
colonizer, your parents and grand- and rejected by the system and by and doomed to collapse in on itself.
parents remembered a time when you. The ‘founding fathers’ con- How could you see? You weren’t
Afrikans roamed free, knew no visa spired against those with aspirations looking because you believed the
or identification paper and oh, how for real liberty, murdering them in dream and anything that spoke
their hearts longed for those days… order to silence the possibility of contrary to it – even our own
but you, you grew up somewhere in dissent. They killed their friends and pain – you rejected as being the

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