Why blame America and Europe for raiding clubs and businesses to deport Africans. Local and international nationalism or “tribalism” is at its peak everywhere. Afterall, your own children and wives, also deported you when they lost respect for your hard work, investment or loots “safely” kept outside Africa? You can imagine how proud and respectful African children or all Diaspora Blacks would have been if Africans had built another new Wonder of the World in Africa.
Since this generation of leaders failed, they have become old and incapable of leaving African communities better than they met it. They deserve the blame and indignities that turned Africa into the Poverty Capital of the world. It doesn’t matter anymore if you are not to blame for the actions of your cohorts. If you think you are a citizen, even natives and others born and bred there, have been deported.
You can then “Go to Court” as we say in Nigeria! To prove that your kins were in California and Mexico before America overtook them. But only after your deportation! It is then, we realize there is no place like home where we could have fought back, invested our money, youth and vigor instead of running out or backing into a wall. Minorities, not even as rich as Elon Musk, become more confident until we are reminded that we can be deported back to South Africa.
African cultures demand each and everyone of us to be our brother keepers. Africa was a Continent where it takes a village to raise a child. But greed and avarice have replaced the thinking faculty of our young and old politicians. So, the elders lost respect of the Youths. Respect can only be earned in a decent community not by selfish leaders whose families and cronies are filthy or stupendously rich while the majority of African children suffer in squalor.
Usually, African cultures respect elders’ opinions because of experience of what has worked or failed in the past. There is no contraction between the culture of wise elders and the Igbo saying that: while the community respects the elders, preference is given to achievements. In other words, though age is respected for wisdom; achievements are revered. Youths that have toiled night and day in different fields, while their mates lay idle inspire many more than old men.
Unfortunately, decent parents that maintained the culture of the glorious days and raised their children the right way by sacrificing whatever they worked hard for on their children are not trusted anymore because their cohorts turn African countries into Poverty Capitals of the world! There is simply nothing to learn from those who wasted the resources of the richest continent on frivolous vanities around the world.
We cannot deny the fact that young men and women fought hard for Africa political Independence. But their children became elderly, selfish and greedy in the same communities. Unlike the Activists that sacrificed comfort in gruesome protests before being jailed at Madela universities across Africa. Today’s political leaders ascend political power to become kleptomaniacs sharing the meagre foreign earnings earned, with their foreign enablers.
The difference between the world’s older politicians and African old politicians is how Asian countries have moved their countries forward and cut their poverty rate. While Africa became the new face of Poverty. It is not a coincidence that children of African Freedom Fighters have joined the world’s oldest political class. During their time most African countries lost the gains made after Independence and actually regressed beyond the time they took over.
Unlike Activists that worked audaciously to turn Nigeria into potential Regional Power the world anticipated. These prodigal children developed a sense of false security out of pride of past laurels and glories. Before these new political successors could build on the hard work of their fathers, they squandered resources and income like prodigal children.
Some, as godfathers, surround themselves with close family members and cronies for succession. It is very difficult to emulate elders that care more about themselves perpetrating economic and/or political power almost forever rather than preparing for the future of the next generations. It gets worse when they spend more for the skill training of their families in foreign countries, with resources that could have provided much to the majority of families at home.
There is this cultural shock when African children born outside the Continent tell their parents what to do as they lose control outside Africa. No matter where in the world, children express their opinions more from adolescence. Their tantrums are easier to culture as a toddler than as older kids. What many of the elders took as corrections that propel them into successful endeavors are called abuse by the new generation today.
Nowhere are these enablers more conspicuous than comparing Nigerian currency in the 1980s until they got it closer to Zimbabwe dollars today. It is not by accident or by Western conspiracy against Zimbabwe alone, there are internal enemies that postulated that Nigeria is rich enough to open a liberal Central Bank (which no country in the world ever did) and compete in the Open Market. Our sweet teeth for foreign products exploded at the expense of local finished products.
What were these prodigal children thinking? A country that has no finished product to export embraced the notion that imports are no problem but admitted that lack of export is the problem. You would think exports that were not possible in decades, could be easily corrected by Structural Adjustment with the help of gullible naive “natives”. We accepted Structural Adjustment enticement from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
See, if you want to see drama o! Find out who is in control when it comes to who to invite to weddings between children and parents. Parents that pay for their children’s weddings in Africa dictate most of the terms. Mind you, children outside Africa arrange and pay for most of their expenses. African parents cannot afford the taste of sumptuous weddings their children arrange unless they are very wealthy in foreign currency. Yet, parents want input.
Farouk Martins Areas @oomoaresa
