I wonder why Africans seem to be the only people not to wake up to the fact that the world’s number one destination for wealth and resources is actually Africa, writes Andrew Wutawunashe in his book Dear Africa – The Call of The African Dream that The Patriot is serialising.
FEW writers, if any, have ever captured the sheer intensity of the groaning of black people during the years of their subjugation and suffering under colonialism and apartheid as did that great writer, Alan Paton.
His book, Cry, the Beloved Country, set as an English literature text book in my early years in African junior high school, left an indelible sense of the painful sighs of Africa occasioned by the social conditions of the poverty that spawned a culture of crime among young black people living in an atmosphere of endemic fear.
That haunting, mournful yet poetic refrain lingers powerfully in the mind of any who had the privilege of reading the story: “… Cry the beloved country; cry for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear.
‘Let him not love the earth too deeply; nor laugh … for fear will rob him of all this.’
You are left with no doubt that these were the lamentations of a compassionate prophet during a dark season in which it was so difficult to embrace hope and envision a brighter future for black people.
Yet if Paton could read this book today, because I simply cannot recreate the awesome emotion of his words, I would put an aggressive positive parody to his words and rather say, ‘Dream, the beloved continent; dream for the sake of the unborn black child that he inherit not our reproach. ‘Teach him to love the African continent very deeply – to be moved when the birds of his land are singing — to give all his heart to its mountains and valleys … for it is God’s endowment to him for his greatness and competitiveness among the nations.’
In this generation, we owe past, present and future generations of black people a debt of something that is intriguing in its simplicity, and yet so baffling in its elusiveness.
No people, no nation has ever risen to a place of greatness and competitiveness on the face of the earth without this simple thing.
Those who found and nurtured it as a people overcame great odds and built themselves to places of great achievement on the face of the earth.
Those who found it, underestimated it and abandoned it aborted great things that would have surely come.
Those who didn’t find it never really aspired to much.
What is this great thing, this great key that we owe black people everywhere?
It is not money or wealth — but it will create great wealth.
Misreading the game, black people are crying out for aid from rich nations, or taking great pains to abandon the African continent to go and enjoy the finished fruits of far off lands — oblivious to the fact that it is this key that inspired the peoples of those nations to build themselves into conditions of stability, wealth and competitiveness.
Whenever I see all those Africans risking their lives to cross seas in small boats so that they may live in Europe or some other nations as economic refugees, I am reminded of that great story — parable — Acres of Diamonds.
In the story, a poor farmer, struggling on his land through which runs a stream, to make his fortune, hears of a legendary place reputed to have acres of diamonds to be picked off the ground. The poor farmer leaves his land to go and find his fortune in these acres of diamonds.
After decades of quest, now a sick dying old man, he decides to give up his quest and return to his farm to die.
A few days after getting back home, he hobbles to the stream on his land.
When he bends down to touch the water, he sees diamonds in the shallow water, on the stream bank — and yes —everywhere. Only then does he realise that the legendary land with acres of diamonds has always actually been his own farm!
I wonder why Africans seem to be the only people not to wake up to the fact that the world’s number one destination for wealth and resources is actually Africa!
The answer to this blind misdirection is this key we owe our generations.
So what is this all important key, you may ask?
It is a key within the reach of every black person, and even children, should I say, more so children—are able to grasp this key.
This is the key.
We owe black people a dream—an African dream.
Yes, a dream — for it is the abstract substance of a dream that is the foundation upon which great and competitive nations are built.
To date, Americans speak clearly of the American dream, and time and again refer to the ‘pursuit of happiness’ to which they were inspired centuries ago by their founding fathers who were mere religious refugees.
The British nearly conquered the world on the sail of the twin dream of greatness and empire — calling their tiny island Great Britain.
Through the socialist dream great nations like China and the Soviet Union were built.
Africa’s biggest problem is ‘there is no African Dream’.
The season that birthed great progress among Africans and black people everywhere was the season of the dreamers.
Dr Martin Luther King Junior galvanised black people into protests and activism that led to the official desegregation of the United States of America with the historic words, ‘I have a dream’. The legacy of dreamers of the ascent of black people, like Marcus Garvey and others, is evident everywhere among black people.
Then an army of dreamers of African liberation and unity, such as Kwame Nkrumah and others rose up and birthed the de-colonised Africa we know today.
As the season of liberation ran its course, black people made a serious blunder: they stopped dreaming, and worse still, abandoned the dreams of their founding fathers.
The problem could well be that black people only saw things in the reactionary mode of solving colonial problems.
So, instead of identifying visions and dreams, they simply looked at new black governments as vehicles for solving past problems and ‘delivering services’ to them.
They did not necessarily see themselves as bearing the responsibility of building up the Promised Land.