My Africa makes me weep

As a young African, living in a province called South Africa, I sometimes sit and silently wonder: “Is this the African continent that leaders such as Thomas Sankara and Robert Sobukwe fought for?”

Trying to answer that question leaves me with many more questions that need answers, such as how they would have turned out if they were still alive, and whether they’d be happy with the current state of affairs on our beautiful but ugly continent.

Although I sometimes try to answer those questions, I’m left with a sense of dissatisfaction and disgust at my current leaders, who I think have forgotten why they fought against oppression in the first place. I’m starting to think that it has something to do with chronic memory loss; after all, the continent is filled with aging heads of state who are forever fast asleep and in need of rest.

It breaks my heart to see images of my African brothers and sisters fleeing from their own people and countries, and taking dangerous and drastic measures in pursuit of a better life — and it’s even more heartbreaking to see how many of them end up losing their beloved lives in the process.

Let’s not forget the deadly civil war happening in South Sudan where many of my brothers and sisters have died, been injured, suffered, been displaced and who’ll have to live with the effects, including the brutal psychological damage, of war.

We should also think of the heartbreaking war happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the ongoing slave trade in Libya. Is this the Africa we want? Is this what being an African is all about ?

What does it mean to be African today? We have an African Union, which is supposed to be the head of African unity but which is funded by non-Africans. The very same African Union is situated in a building that was fully funded and built by non-Africans.

I’m left wondering how have we, as African people, allowed ourselves to be governed by dinosaurs with absolutely no ideas and no sense of patriotism or Africanism. Could it be that we, as African people, portray no sense of belonging or Africanism?

A people who effectively do not own their home will forever be treated like outsiders in their own land and will die eating the narrative being fed to them by others.