I HAVE visited black countries where in certain cities the last buildings were constructed during colonial times, scores of years past.
Whatever the reason, the tragic result is that the black person is left without the most important key to creativeness, competitiveness and greatness.
He has been left without a dream.
It is therefore critical that an African dream be defined, taught and endeared to every black man, woman, boy, girl and child.
Every existing pan-African organ, such as the African Union (AU) and regional organs should make the enunciation of the African dream their first priority.
Every school, educational and training institution should devote time to daily write this dream in the hearts and minds of Africans, young and old.
The media and the arts should birth lyrics, poems, and movies, theatrical and other productions to endear the dream to Africans everywhere. Governments should assign and empower departments to educate and win hearts to the African dream.
There should be an Africa we dream about.
Simplistic as all this may sound, it is the most powerful principle for mobilising the commitment, passion and creativity which Africa needs in order to ascend.
Black people have for some reason substituted the need to have and pursue their own dream with a childish and short-sighted consumerism which sees them everywhere abandoning their own creativity in favour of consuming things made by other peoples.
A culture of this nature will, if adhered to, ensure that Africa will never become a competitive continent.
Africa must learn, like other nations that have become competitive, to re-invent all sorts of wheels and put an African brand on them.
Competitiveness does not always call for originality. The Americans shamelessly recruited former Nazis to help them make advanced weaponry and even advanced their space programme with Hitler’s technology.
The Soviets did not hesitate to do the same.
Dr Mahathir Mohammed inspired the people of Malaysia with a dream to transform Malaysia into a modern competitive nation with a cunning mixture of re-invented wheels, like the Malaysian car, and by attracting Silicon Valley to come and manufacture micro-chips with cheaper and more relaxed labour conditions in his country—all the time using the opportunity to acquire advanced technology for Malaysia.
In the Africa of dreamers, African vehicles will ply the roads; skyscrapers with distinctly African architectural themes will adorn the skyline.
The Shaka fighter aircraft will be assembled by a pan-African consortium.
The Nkrumah space Station will be manned by scientists from all over Africa.
Indigenous technologies will enhance the comfort and productivity of African villages.
When there is an African dream, it will inspire numerous dreams in the hearts and minds of individual Africans, and they will enterprise for African competitiveness in every field.
These simple components are needed in order to constitute the African dream.
First there must be a spiritual component—the dream must embody a passionate love for Africa and a deep commitment to her. Part of the Jew’s dream for Jerusalem is, ‘If I forget thee oh Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning’.
Let us bring Paton to fullness and say ‘Let us love Africa very deeply.’
Africa is a continent that has always warmed the hearts of all that came to its beautiful shores.
Foreigners have loved Africa to the place of insisting they be buried there.
Ironically, it is the black person, the African whose heart is now cold towards the land of his divine endowment.
This lack of love and commitment causes Africans to abandon the continent and suffer humiliation as minorities in far off lands. It’s a wicked deception! Dear Africa; it’s time to love Africa once more, and to teach your children that there is no better land on the face of the earth than Africa.
There is no better being than the essence of African-ness.
I have heard people ask ‘How can we love this continent with its poverty, wars and political pressures?’
Love for Africa is the fuel that will cause us to stay and solve the problems of the continent. It was because of love for their land that Americans did not run anywhere during the years of the Great Depression, but stayed, kept on dreaming, worked hard and transformed it.
It is those who love it who will change the painful face of Africa.
A new love for Africa must rise again until we can say with real passion and sincerity and the words of one great African dreamer and liberator,
“I am an African . . .”
Love for Africa must also embody in it a love for people and things African.
This is why again the black person must express Africa in even such simple things as dress and food, and in practising and teaching his children to practise the positive things of African culture.
Love and learn the languages and dialects of Africa. This love will also be fuelled by the appreciation of the sacrifices that were made to free the continent.
I can hear African martyrs say from their graves, ‘Did we die for this land in vain that those we handed it to might trash and abandon it?’
Love Africa. It’s all we’ve got.
Second, the dream must in it embody the unity of Africa.
The unity of Africa, one Africa, is a major key to Africa’s competitiveness among the nations.
The founding fathers of African liberation believed passionately in the unity of Africa, and put their actions where their talk was.
The fact must not be lost to Africa that if the continent continues in the present fragmentation, the end will be a shameless re-colonisation, either by respective colonial masters, or by new opportunistic nations.
The time is coming when anything that cannot stand for itself will be swallowed.
Third, the Dream must embody a fierce sense of patriotism, identity, distinction, strength, ownership and self-determination.
When Africa’s generation of liberators discovered the simple truth, ‘We are our own liberators’, they defined a dream that must pervade every area of African-ness in the future.
Africa must not remain the disabled beggar of the nations, but must now say, “We are our own developers, we own our land and resources and the dream you hear is ours—we own it—we are our own wealth builders, we are our own defenders and simply put, look out world, the Africans have arrived on the block—we are!”
Self-determination also means Africa must develop its own ideology and systems and not continue to be a monkey performer of systems and ideologies developed by other peoples to suit their own national evolutions.
For example, there must be a brand of democracy based on the inclusive African cultural experience so that Africans won’t have to slaughter each other every election year as they monkey—perform Western democracy.
In the dream must be a thrust for uncompromising strength in all areas—whether governance, economy, social or military.