Power of hate is back, Africa must respond

There is a chance that the peach coloured one who reigns from the White House shall retain his seat in the next election. This is largely because racists are liars. Make no mistake, just like in 2016 and in Brexit, racists will choose insanity over equality. The power of hate is back and it’s more potent than when Hitler wielded it.

Its potency is mixed with a confusing array of conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, climate denialism and religion. This mix has even roped in some hapless African believers who think that Trump who was a friend of Epstein, is somehow stopping child trafficking by the Clintons and therefore is a saint. So potent is this lethal mix of ideologies that racism seems not to be the issue yet it is.

Today, Trump, who is himself a voter by mail, is firmly against voting by mail in an effort to ensure only white America votes. The blatant discrimination against people of colour through gerrymandering is well documented. How else would you explain voting districts that specifically avoid black neighbourhoods or include only small pockets of black neighbourhoods to ensure their vote doesn’t matter?

The issues faced by the black race in the USA may seem far removed from us in Kenya but it does matter to us. It matters because we have kin and kith living in those United States and how a black man is treated anywhere is how we will be treated someday.

When an Asian is attacked there is capacity for an Asian country to defend them. China has the economic and military muscle to protect the interest of Asians across the world just by being China.

To add to that the Asian community has India, South Korea, Japan and Singapore as countries with enough clout to matter in the international stage. They are able to give great amounts of pressure which is why racism against these communities has declined. It matters to be wealthy and powerful on the international stage and it matters most to those filled with hate.

My issue is, there is no country for the black man! There is no single black nation on the face of the earth that is powerful enough to matter. The richest black country is South Africa, the problem is her wealth is tiny on the world stage and her military power is not enough to sneeze near a single American aircraft career.

Even worse South Africa, Kenya, Zambia, Ghana, Ethiopia and Tanzania have forgotten their Panafrican roots. There was a time when these countries stood for freedom of the continent and paid in cash and blood for the freedom of her people. Indeed Kenneth Kaunda stood against apartheid South Africa until military and economic sabotage were a common occurrence in his nation.

Harsh on ourselves

Kenya still has some South African migrants who settled here in the 1980s. Yet today the pan-African flag flies low. As though it died with Jomo, Selassie, Nyerere and Nkrumah. Indeed these men met in a hotel in Ghana in a town called Cape Coast and charted the way forward for African independence. It is rumoured Kwame almost bankrupted Ghana in an effort to liberate his black brothers.

Today that passion is gone. We are no longer a continent united. We watch our brothers die in conflicts in the Congo, Central African Republic and South Sudan with little pity.

We aren’t bothered with Africans dying in Africa and we are even less bothered with Africans dying in the USA. We forget that the foot that chokes the air out of the Floyd’s of America is the same foot on our necks economically. It is the foot that holds our debt, ensures we don’t have the manufacturing capacity and that for decades, francophone states only had leaders that favoured French commercial interests.

We forget that the racism we see on the streets of America is the same unfair treatment the West will give to countries they consider some kind of backward stinky hole, to quote Trump.

Africa needs to rise up, ideologically, economically and consciously. We must awaken the minds of the black race, we must put a strong economy behind our black appearance and we must also put some military muscle behind our nations. Then and only then will we find some dignity on the world stage. We either ride and stand for our own or forever live on our knees begging hat in hand.

It is therefore sad that instead of creating a positive image of our nations to the West we constantly write articles, and do documentaries to show how bad and backwards we are! It is the saddest thing to see. To see a son of this soul degrade it and hate on it in some international newspaper and then the same person will wonder why it’s hard for him to get a visa and when he does he is subjected to “special” invasive searches at the airport.

I ask you now have you seen an American talk about the murder rate in Chicago? Have they told you how they have more mass shootings and mass shooting deaths than there are terrorism threats? No they haven’t because they know how to hide their sins. We only know how to hate on ourselves, disunite ourselves and then go begging to the west for help.

Lastly, Trump said he is not going to accept the results of the election this year. I did not see the African Union offer election observers and mediators to go manage the peaceful transition of power there. Why not? If an African leader even hinted at that the West would be here in full force ensuring democracy.

Oh how my heart cries, there is no country for my black children anywhere in the world.

 -The writer is a communications consultant