Africa needs to sort out its own mess
DONALD Trump is undoubtedly the worst thing to happen on our planet for many a year but he may end up being the best thing that happened to Africa.
There is no doubt Africa is not on his agenda. Europe has also lost interest in Africa due to the refugee and Brexit problems they face.
Four years ago Africa was being hailed as the next big development continent after China. You won’t find any economist worth their salt making those predictions at the moment.
Africa has done nothing but go backwards economically over the past four years with the exception of the likes of Ghana, Rwanda and Kenya, which have growth rates that exceed 5%.
Our president has not explained to us why they can do it and we can’t.
The reason for the lack of progress is simple. We have poor leaders. We do not have leaders who have vision and integrity – two of the most important components of good leadership.
Seventeen of the worst 30 countries on the Global Corruption Index are African countries. We should be ashamed of ourselves.
There are many outstanding people on this continent who could provide the leadership that we need to go forward but they are not “connected”.
We admire power over intelligence and integrity for some odd reason I cannot understand .
The Americans have just fallen into that trap. Instead of having Bernie Saunders as president, they have Donald Trump.
We finally have no option in Africa, thanks to Trump, but to stop our wars, put all the despots to pasture, stop blaming everyone else for our ills and start developing this beautiful continent of ours.
No one is listening anymore to our ranting and raving about how badly done by we are. No one cares. They know that in this day and age we are largely to blame for our own mess.
We are masters of our own destiny. The imperialists and colonialists will soon be gone, taking a chunk of their investments with them. We have to replace that money somehow. We have the talent to do that, provided we elect the right leaders.
I agree that the International Criminal Court should not be the judge of our war crimes. We must. We need to hold our leaders accountable on this continent.
We need an AU that puts us on the right course. The current AU is leaderless and dysfunctional.
Countries which purport to be champions of human rights like South Africa must put their money where their mouths are and stop covering up for those leaders on this continent who have no interest in human rights whatsoever.
We need to deal with the reasons why we have so many people fleeing this continent ironically to countries which some African leaders refer to as imperialists or colonialists.
If South Africa were closer to Europe, guess where all the refugees in this country would have gone? They regret coming here.
If we put all our petty differences to bed, put corrupt politicians and businessmen in jail where they belong no matter what connections they have, elect leaders with vision and integrity hold them accountable, start working together by adopting a goal of a strong Africa first and not political parties, factions or religion, pour money into education, skills development and infrastructure to create economies that are robust, inventive and self-sufficient, we will be the new China.
If not, we will just condemn the future generations to perpetual poverty, wars and famine.