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Saidi the bane of African development

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IN his article published by The Daily News on May 22 2015, Bill Saidi, that failed writer, tries to rubbish Africa Day through his perky claims that the continent is being afflicted by what he says is a leadership ‘dilemma’. Titled ‘Leadership: Africa’s dilemma’, Saidi says no sane African or African-American could celebrate last Monday’s 52nd anniversary of Africa Day because ‘our people are butchering each other!’ “The major issues are, of course, poverty and internecine butchery. The cause of all this is the grossly leadership,” reads part of the article. Funny enough, this is the same Saidi who once wrote that freedom can make you a pauper! Saidi foolishly subscribes to the notion that Africa’s escape route to development is through acquiescing to the West’s ridiculous ideas of governance that are premised on placing puppet and implausible regimes on Africa and stealing from motherland. Saidi suffers from poverty of ideas, ideology and ideals that define the route of economic empowerment that Africa is taking. His utterances are obviously aimed at President Robert Mugabe who is the current Chairman of the African Union (AU), but the fundamental point that Saidi chooses to ignore and one which Africa is trying to shake off is the combined effect of slavery and colonialism. It is these two horrors that have suppressed Africa’s growth and development. It is an undisputable fact that the 400 years of slavery followed by a century of colonialism robbed Africa these years of potential development. The toxic legacy of these two dastardly acts by the West will forever linger in the public consciousness and maintain negative memories in the minds of progressive peoples of this world. Of course Saidi does not and will never form part of this grouping that has grown to understand and appreciate the fact this is the starting point for Africa’s quest for economic development. Yet hiding that point in favour of the tenets of so-called democracy, which in Saidi’s grossly warped thinking means people like President Mugabe must step down from power because of the misplaced allegation that they have overstayed in office is Africa’s biggest undoing. Our real adversary is not in the number of years a leader has stayed in power, but it lies in a leader’s determination to stave off the ever intrusive hand of Westerners. It lies in ensuring that the abundant natural resources have been put in the hands of the majority and that these owners of these resources are adequately making use of them. Slain Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi tried to forge with his dream of United States of Africa, but before dawn, his country was being obliterated with NATO bombs. Where is the Libya that Gaddafi built today? Where is the democracy that the West claimed they were bringing to Libya when they deposed Gaddafi? What state is Libya in today after Gaddafi’s departure? Today President Mugabe is berated by the West for giving land to over 400 000 black households and giving blacks total and unmitigated control of their economy. Yet in the eyes of the West and those of Saidi, President Mugabe is a ‘dictator’. Is it not the West that is causing fights and chaos in Africa? Is it not the West that funded the MDC’s project of halting Zimbabwe’s economic empowerment programme; the same West that spent billions in Libya’s destruction? Is Saidi alive to these facts? Or as expected, his perpetual anger towards a true visionary leadership is blinkering his thinking and collective judgment of African leaders? African leaders are moving from previously untenable structures of deprivation and outright theft of resources from Western powers. We are dismantling structures of colonialism and its hegemony. We are marching towards a new dispensation, that of economic freedom and total control of our resources. The message has been clear, it is not only control of these resources, but hard work that will bring the much needed development we all aspire. Addressing the high-level opening of the 96th United Nations General Assembly, in September last year, Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, highlighted that Africa is regenerating and ‘emerging from the long night of decline’. The Ugandan leader noted that the continent is emerging from centuries of colonialism with a purchasing power of US$2,5 billion that is growing at an annual rate of 3,2 percent. The Africa we dream of is one where we have resources in our control. We dream of building both political capital and social bases underpinned by use of these resources. We dream of matching the standards of Asia. Mr Saidi needs to be reminded that these hands that won us political freedom, cannot fail us in the struggle for economic freedom. Let those with ears listen.

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