If there is a people who deserve to be led with a heart that seeks to serve them and to restore all the dignity they were robbed of, it is the black people, writes Andrew Wutawunashe in his book Dear Africa – The Call of the African Dream that The Patriot is serialising.

BLACK people have built with their unremunerated sweat and broken backs nations and empires for other peoples who are now regarded as super powers and as the developed world.
Even their children and loved ones were snatched from them by colonial tyranny and slave trade.
Barely decades after the last of these untried crimes were committed, black people find themselves gazing longingly, even enviously, at wealth plundered from them that adorns the palaces and courts of the potentates of other peoples.
Their hearts are yearning for the kind of leader who will come asking in his or her heart, “What can I do for my people, what can I give to them, how can I serve them — how can I lift up these beautiful abused black people?”
For all who seek to lead or are in political leadership of black people, there is an awesome array of past mentors whose travails spoke of men and women who sought to answer the question, “What can I do for my people?”
There is the martyrs’ roll — the men and women who hold up their heads from eternity and say to all black people, “I gave you my very life that you may be free and stand in your place of dignity.”
Legends like Dr Martin Luther King Jr: for his Dream for Black people, they shot him in Memphis, Tennessee. Giants like Malcolm X — for his empowering ideology they sponsored traitors to slay him with impunity. The dynamic and incomparable Patrice Lumumba of Congo — for his dangerous theme of uniting all the Congo’s tribes his murder was sanctioned in Western capitals.
The visionary Bantu Steven Biko: for fighting to restore to the black man his identity, dignity, self-confidence and self-reliance they tortured him to death in an Apartheid dungeon. Indeed, every free black nation has an impressive martyrs’ roll, including children massacred for protesting.
Then there are those who endured literally decades in prisons, those who suffered unspeakable acts of torture and harassment. Like the simply great Nelson Mandela, whom they condemned to the harsh Robben Island for years on the grounds that he was a subversive.
He came out and shocked everyone by building an inclusive democracy based on reconciliation, in much the same way as Zimbabwe’s Patriotic Front, led by Mugabe and Nkomo, had done before him.
Most African leaders came out of years of imprisonment to lead their people to freedom — Jomo Kenyatta, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo and many others throughout Southern, East, Central and West Africa.
Then there are the battle and exile leaders, such as Oliver Tambo, Sam Nujoma and others, who endured incredible dangers of war and deprivation. With respect, John F Kennedy did not have half the comprehension these Africans had of the personal sacrifice he called for when he said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.
Then there is the unique heart of Black people themselves. If there is a people who deserve to be led with a heart that seeks to serve them and to restore all the dignity they were robbed of, it is the Black people.
The African people know how to give all their heart, mind, body and soul to a leader. They will follow a leader with a heart-warming loyalty that even puzzles other peoples. This is why it is the more puzzling that for some black political leaders, the choice tool with which to lead their people is fear.
Where does the heart come from that does not hesitate to incite the masses of black people to beat and kill each other for political ends? Dear African leader, give to your people the gift of peace. The slave master flogged them, the colonial master shot and tortured them. To you their fellow Black leader they cry, “Restore our dignity and our humanness! Give us rest, give us peace at last!”
One of the major issues which African political leaders, indeed African governments, must confront and re-address urgently is the issue of Western democracy. Recently I watched with sadness as an African leader in a country where a violent election had led to a stalemate said angrily, “How can I share power…”
As he spoke like that, the body toll was rising as his and his rival’s supporters slaughtered each other on the street. It immediately dawned on me that there are two key words which are the root of Africans ‘chronic problems’ with the Western model of democracy.
Western democracy is deeply rooted in the concept of competition for power. In other words, let my people give me power. I will compete for it at any cost.
And so, periodically, in order to satisfy the expectations mainly of former colonial masters whose systems of governance Africans are imitating without thinking of their relevance to their people, African politicians subject their people to a violent, murderous and definitely un African season of vicious competition for power, culminating in elections which sometimes end in civil wars.
One of the pictures I am failing to delete from my mind is that of a Black man running in an East African capital with an arrow that had been shot through his head by supporters of a rival political party because their respective leaders could not agree on the results of an election.
Hundreds of men, women and children died in a matter of days. Actually, this is not democracy. Even prides of lions in the jungle have wiser and less costly ways of determining leadership.
Yet African leaders have tacitly accepted that the slaughter is an acceptable price for practising Western democracy and getting nods of approval from their former masters. I submit to our leaders and to the world that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with Africans when it comes to democracy.
The problem is that, just like in other areas of life, out of an inferiority complex fostered by years of subjugation, African political leaders are thoughtlessly adopting a former master’s type of democracy instead of having the courage and wisdom to design their own democracy, suited to their people in the spirit of self-determination.
A three piece woollen suit was designed for near zero temperatures in a Westminster chamber of Parliament. African politicians will make this suit official dress in a thirty-five degree temperature chamber in a tropical African city.
They feel there is something inferior about cool African garments. The judges’ wigs are even more bizarre, especially the blond ones being designed for Black lady judges. No one even notices that Western democracy was still called democracy when Black people were not even allowed to vote!