As a continent, we
might have a love story with death! Our continent has problems, unless I am the
one with the problems. The cry of war seems to stir up some evil fascination
amongst the continent’s people and her leaders! When the embers of war go out
and fizzle in the Ivory Coast, Central African Republic is set ablaze. The fire
spreads to other nations. In the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, war
is a norm. The sound of gun-fire and missiles is the order of the day. This
love for war has fast spread to Africa’s newest independent state, South Sudan.
South Sudan has not
known peace since the turn of the New Year.
The two main antagonists, former vice-president Riek Machar and the
president, Salva Kiir have locked up in fierce power struggle. One has accused the other of usurping the law
and leading as he wants while the other has fired back by claiming that his
challenger wants to taste power through undemocratic means! The two no longer
are leaders of the oil-rich state, but are the honchos of the Dinka and the
Nuer enclaves! What started off as an attempted coup d’etat by Machar-led
forces has since degenerated into ethnic cleansing, pitting mainly the bigger
Nuer and Dinka tribes. Sudanese have died in numbers and no one knows when the
deaths will stop because the peace talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa,
have not offered us much hope.
Our very own Kenya
tasted the bitterness of war and if what we saw and lived in from late December
2007 to February 2008, is what most of our brothers and sisters in these
African countries go through, day and night, for years, then indeed we must
thank our gods for saving us! Remember the infamous 1994 Rwandan genocide,
where at least 800, 000 perished, mostly Tutsis as the ethnic cleansing pitted the majority Hutus against the minority Tutsis? Our continent and especially her
leaders never learn.civil wars, coup d'etats and armed clashes define the race for power and natural resources. Millions of deaths are the results of these. yet we never learn!
Sadly, the civil wars
and unrest that persist across the richest continent in natural resources are
the curse of the very resources and power. From the oil-oozing Niger Delta in
Nigeria, through the gold mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), to the oil wells in South Sudan,
the greed for the resources has simply out-gunned the power of reason. For
political power and control of the exploitation of our mineral resources, blood
and death is never too far away here. Since the days of the Blood Diamonds in
Sierra Leone that gave rise to the merciless child-soldiers of the late Foday
Sanko rag-tag military to the Late Jonas
Savimbi-led UNITA rebels in Angola, the love for political power and minerals
have indeed been Africa’s curse! Innocent African civilians, military men and
women and rag-tag militia have died in their millions and others displaced, and
painfully so.
Call it the evil
fascination with death! No matter how many die, we still carry on as though
nothing happened. Sadly, our leaders must be brought to the table by the
international community to help them solve matters at home!
This
is Africa where blood smells sweet and death is a norm! Never mind that there
are nations of the world where even the death of a single civilian draws an
outcry from the public. To them, life is precious. In Africa this is never the
case and neither will it be unless the continent is born anew!
