Even Africa must unite H-METRO

TODAY we celebrate Unity Day.

Commemorated on December 22 every year to celebrate the signing of the unity accord, the day is about celebrating things like what Zimbabwe has accomplished through uniting her people and through a lot of other achievements.

The day comes at a time Zimbabwe, and Africa as a continent, is confronted by many challenges which need Africans to unite in finding solutions, much the same way Zimbabweans have united to gain true independence.

Africa, despite being the world’s second-largest and second most populous continent, is ravaged by poverty and disease outbreaks that keep haunting her people.

The continent represents over 20 percent of the Earth’s total land area and has over a billion people and plenty of natural resources but is still haunted by the aforementioned problems and more.

Africa contains over 50 sovereign countries that have authority over their people and possess the right to find solutions to their problems as a continent without being dictated upon by anyone.

African states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, wars, diseases . . . the list is long.

When such problems haunted Zimbabwe in the 1980s, only the signing of the unity accord ended the crisis. Otherwise many lives would have been lost.

Unity ended that crisis and today we celebrate.

The same problems may have forced the states on the continent to form what is now the African Union with a view to tackling the problems bedeviling the continent as a group.

But with all these sovereign states, the significance of Africa Day and the celebration of African unity is still far from being taken seriously by most African countries, let alone people.

We should be uniting as Africans — everyday, not just on a day like May 25 — to fight the troubles that are bothering our people.

Out of the 34 million HIV-positive people worldwide, 69 percent live in sub-Saharan Africa and there are roughly 23.8 million infected persons in all of Africa — that should worry us.

Ninety one percent of the world’s HIV-positive children live in Africa and more than one million adults and children die every year from HIV/AIDS in Africa alone.

These are problems that Africa should tackle as a continent and there is no better way to come together as a people than to unite as a people.

Zimbabwe has done well to make the country peaceful since the unity accord was signed.

We have had our problems as a country but we have never been divided on waring lines ever since the unity accord was signed.

We even welcome Africans in our country with zero xenophobia because we leant to be tolerant and united.