THE FUTURE OF A CONTINENT

So much has been written and said along derogatory lines concerning the bleak future of the African continent. From the rich vegetation of the west of the continent to the desert of Sahara, we find a beautiful interplay of culture, language, people and resources scattered across in leaps and bounds and hidden behind these mix of wealth and beauty is a staggering show of poverty, sub-human conditions and high human rights violation records which defies logic. It is inconceivable that a continent so blessed cannot traverse along progressive lines in the content of values, economic progress and spirituality. A continent teeming with millions of churches growing exponentially in number and mosques as well which ought to suggest a people or race with robust value system where you can find justice, equity and the best of human conditions. It is difficult to reconcile a situation where the number of churches are on the rise and crime, fraud, poverty, insecurity, leadership failure and a host of other situations which directly reduce the human conditions are equally on the increase. What is the correlation between them, one may ask? I can only answer in this article that something went wrong along the line in the history of the continent that we have virtually enshrined a culture of hypocrisy where truth and justice is a vice: a transvaluation of value; in the words of Nzeitche. Hegel once commented on the African continent as lacking in logic and the evolution of the absolute spirit slow or non existent. Walter Rodney blamed the European slave traders for the underdevelopment of the continent and I will be quick to answer that Africans facilitated the trade in slaves as there was nothing in the available system in mind and spirit to resist the repression. I make bold to say that there is still nothing in the available system as we have it today in mind and spirit that have resisted the forces still oppressing the African mind for I cannot tell the difference between African leaders both secular and spiritual and the greedy African slave traders of old. It is a fallacy of false cause to blame absolutely the slave trade for the retrogression in Africa as there were Africans who went as slaves to the new world of Christopher Columbus and rose above the subhuman conditions and fought for racial equality (Martin Luther King Jr) and paved the way for the freedom of their generation. Unless we have a "Metanoia"; a complete turnaround, the kind St Paul described in Eph 4:23, the future of Africa will always be bleak. If the African continent keeps chasing transistory things rather than permanent things which is a development of our value system which will liberate the African mind, the chronic failure of the system will persist in perpetuity for the wealth of humanity is in the human spirit.