By Shepherd Manhambara

AS May 25 approaches, it is important for us to take stock of where Africa is as a continent. It is also critical to identify our successes and where we need to improve in order to build a strong, united and prosperous Africa free from hunger, disease and ignorance. All of us would want to live on a continent that looks after its own, that is respected by people from other continents, that is capable of protecting its interests in a global context that is becoming increasingly competitive. First, our successes as a continent. It is a fact that all colonial powers who controlled most of our countries and dominated our lives are now gone. We are referring here to the Portuguese who were forced by African liberation movements to leave Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea Bissau. We are also referring to the French who were compelled to abandon their West African empire after a prolonged and bloody war of Algerian independence. We are also referring to the British who had to forego their ambitions to control Africa from Cape to Cairo because African nationalism proved too strong and too costly to contain. The political and military struggles for liberation came to an end in 1994 when Nelson Mandela became the first African President of South Africa. The question that arises from the above mentioned success is whether we have fully grasped the gigantic scope and enormous implications of this Pan-African victory, whether we are narrating this epic struggle to our children and grand children across generations in a manner which ensures that there is a collective memory that unites us on a continental scale! The recent Afro-Phobic attacks of Africans from other parts of Africa by some Africans in South Africa speak volumes about how well or unwell we are telling one of the most riveting stories of the 20th century, a story that we share historically right across our continent. It is an elementary failure on our part which if not corrected could have long term consequences likely to impact negatively on the vision of the African Union. One can argue that if this story of African liberation remains untold and marginal to everything we do, be it in the field of education, economics, medicine, politics, international relations etc we are left without a solid African point of view from which not only to unite Africa, but also to interact with other races and continents without compromising our interests! It is such a point of view which can provide the perspectives, approaches, orientations, the ideologies, the frames and angles that we need when it comes to representing and protecting our interests in the global arena. A good example where the struggle for African liberation got forgotten completely at our expense is the way Libya got invaded by the West with the consent of some key African countries. What is often forgotten when we glibly refer to African struggles for liberation are the odds that were stacked against Africans. It was an asymmetrical fight, the typical David and Goliath story of biblical legend, Africa pitted against a very powerful European continent armed to the teeth and bristling with the latest weaponry one could think of! Addicted as it was to predatory traditions and practices of siphoning away huge quantities of African resources year in year out, Europe used its huge military might, its treasure and all the ingenuity it could muster to resist African nationalism so as to keep Africa as the goose that laid the golden eggs not for Africans, but for its white children and grand-children. Europe lost that war for a number of reasons. Notwithstanding what our detractors have always rushed to say, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), now African Union (AU) made sure most if not all independent African countries supported the struggle for freedom in those countries still occupied by Europe. The struggle became a common cause, in the process generating a consensus across the whole continent. There was passion, there was coordination, there was a common vision, courage and commitment and singularity of purpose that proved too strong to go on resisting, and Europe had no other choice, but to capitulate, strong as it was and weak as Africa was! Here is how Baffour Ankomah puts it: “We were tired, as Africans, of being pushed around by people who were no better than us, except having the dubious privilege of coming from a country or countries built on the blood and sweat of African slaves.” When we take into account that it is the labour of African slaves, their blood and sweat that built for four centuries the economic foundations of modern Europe and the Americas, we immediately appreciate the epic significance of the Pan-African liberation project. From being the original home of African slaves of the so-called ‘New World’, from being the home of hewers of wood and drawers of water for other races both in Africa and abroad, from being the most despised proverbial servants of the colonial empires, we are now, at the political level, the lords of a whole continent that we call ours. That success alone constitutes one of the most critical developments of the 20th century, a development whose implications the Europeans and Americans are reluctant to accept! One of the major problems we have is to accept that indeed Africa scored an epic victory towards the latter part of the 20th century. And that we should build on that victory in order to create a comfortable and secure home for our people! That victory has opened up vast spaces and vast opportunities for us. Accordingly we no longer need to be defined by others, to have our policies, our politics, our economics being dictated by people whom we know from history have been consistently hostile to our survival as a people, people who, to paraphrase President Mugabe, are constantly carrying out feasibility studies on how to eliminate us! The story about the struggle for our liberation is epic in scope one which deserves to be at the centre of everything we do and dream about. It constitutes the foundation of modern Africa, the source of our world outlook, our ethos, our value systems as well as the source of our ambitions and dreams. The only challenge we face is that of lack of belief in ourselves. It is as if we continue to doubt the significance of our achievements long after the white master has departed; it is also as if we are waiting for some form of endorsement of whatever we do from our former white masters. Our minds, for some unknown reasons, have wittingly and or unwittingly remained loyal to a worldview whose values were defined by our departed masters long ago. Our tendency has been, much against our true interests, to mimic them, echo them, follow them even in almost everything we do, especially in economics and education.