In the rare instances where white people have allowed the names of black heroes to be mentioned, they have depicted them as defeated savages, while sanitising villains of their own colour, writes Andrew Wutaunashe in his book, Dear Africa – The Call of The African Dream that The Patriot is serialising.

DEAR Africa, dear Black People in Europe, United Kingdom, United States of America, and all the Americas, the Caribbean and all over this Global Village: hear me!
It is time to wake up!
Peoples of other nationalities and colours whom God in His wisdom put upon the face of this earth have through the generations taken up much more than their share of the resources of the earth and gone on to make far reaching contributions to the progress of mankind.
It is not hard to associate certain products and achievements with the peoples of the east and of the west with the Reds and the Whites.
I agree of course that many of these achievements and resources were unfairly acquired by victimising and plundering the black people at their most vulnerable points in history.
This was done through conquest, the slave trade, colonialism, neo-colonialism and many other forms of subterfuge in which especially the white people excelled and, in some cases, continue to excel.
But the time has come for us to shake off all this and answer the call of history and destiny.
In 2010, and because of the soccer World Cup being held in Africa, in South Africa, I heard again and again these prophetic words, prophetic in a way that reaches far beyond a mere game of soccer being beamed by satellite television into every nation of the earth: It’s time for Africa! Ke nako! — the clear convinced voice of the African woman proclaimed to the whole world.
Of course to many who happen to think that it is business as usual, these words simply meant that it is time for yet another safari in the playground of Africa where men and women of other colours come and enjoy the resources of a people who have not yet fathomed the value of what is their own.
But discerning people, black people and their allies of other colours, heard an immensely farther reaching and travailing cry in the voice of that queenly African woman.
Ke nako! — she hailed, like Africa the Woman, declaring, “It’s time for me to give birth!”
She was not just saying that it’s time for Africa to host soccer.
She was saying, “It is about time Africa, black people, took their share of the earth’s resources, achieved their quota and made their uniquely African contribution to this world.”
In that voice were compressed the cries and travails of black prophets, from Zephaniah and the Queen of Sheba of the Bible, to Booker T Washington with his Up from Slavery, to Harriet Tubman with her Underground Railroad smuggling black people out of slavery, to Rosa Parks with her defiant ride on the segregated bus in the racist American south, to Marcus Garvey, to Malcolm X, to the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior with the Dream, to the Reverend Jesse Jackson, to African liberators like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Julius Nyerere, Leopold Senghor, Jomo Kenyatta, Kamuzu Banda, Kenneth Kaunda, Joshua Nkomo, Robert Mugabe, Seretse Khama, Eduardo Mondlane, Samora Machel, Queen Nzinga and Aghostino Neto of Angola, Sam Nujoma, Oliver Tambo, Bantu Steven Biko, Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, Thabo Mbeki and many more whom I reluctantly fail to mention for lack of time and space.
The cry, Ke nako or, it is about time! as I put it, assumes a serious urgency because, through the seasons of political liberation spanning 400 years from slavery and emancipation, to colonialism and political liberation culminating in the liberation of South Africa from Apartheid in 1994, black people began to realise their dream, then tragically aborted it almost as soon as struggle yielded opportunity!
The chief blunder was to abandon the powerful maxims of the early black prophets and prophetesses of the African dream who insisted that black people set their own standards and become their own judges instead of aspiring to ape the standards of other peoples.
It is amazing how the voices of black prophets like Malcolm X, Bantu Steven Biko, Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey and any others who urged a stand for blackness, have been silenced or reduced to token mention.
This by black governments and leaders who have surrendered to an anachronistic vision of leading their people to aspire for the approval and acceptance of people of other colours through adopting an absurd white-blackness.
Black political and other leaders do not seem to understand the far reaching damage which this step backwards is wreaking on present and future generations of black people, in effect ensuring that black people as individuals, communities and nations will stand little chance of future competitiveness among peoples of other colours.
Have you noticed how religious, serious and jealous people of other colours are about their history, values, standards and prophets?
White people, for example, will insist that even black people learn their history, values, heroes and prophets.
Almost every educated black person, even a child, will know about Napoleon, Columbus, Queen Victoria, Abraham Lincoln, Cecil Rhodes, Paul Kruger, while black heroes, even those whose priceless contributions and sacrifices are as recent as the 20th century, are hastily dumped into inexplicable archives.
In the rare instances where white people have allowed the names of black heroes to be mentioned, they have depicted them as defeated savages, while sanitising villains of their own colour.
Why are black people ashamed even of their own liberation struggles?
Why are we hiding our history, culture and values from our children?
Why does a black person in Europe or America have a perception that African-ness is a primitive savagery from which he should distance himself?
Why is the black person hanging his head in shame and raising his children as a confused cocktail of alien values and cultures?
The truth is that when people have abandoned their God-given prerogative of self-determination, that is, to judge themselves and to set their own standards, they have set the stage for their own extinction and denouement by other peoples.
This today is the reality of the black person in the global village.
To be continued